Self overhauling printer

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bob Eager presented the following explanation :

My apologies, I assumed the 'L'.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Mary Fisher submitted this idea :

I suspect the Samsung is designed as a throw away printer, not intended to be serviced or repaired. The more robust HP's are very serviceable and parts are cheap and easily available, combined with lots of repair information on the web.

The do all eventually suffer from the rollers going hard with a glazed surface which mis-feeds the paper. If you can get to them, 'Sticky Stuff Remover' wiped onto the rollers with a paper towel will soften the glaze and make them once again grip the paper properly.

[Harry Bloomfield]

None the less, there are plenty of them available on the second hand market (Ebay) and they are a favourite with dealers.

[Dave Liquorice]

Or you can get "Platenclene" from AF no PCL100.

"Restore grip to feeder sheet on machines with automatic document feed systems. Restores grip on printer & fax rollers. Leaves no residue. Dissolves ink stains, oil & grease. Use with Safecloths, Safewipes & PC Buds. Packaging: 100ml pump spray"

[Peter Crosland]

There is no reason for it to go to landfill now. Your local household refuse disposal site should be able to put it in the chain for recyling. Realistically a printer of such age having produced large amounts of print is so far past it design life that even if you can get the spares is unlikely to be revivable to a state that it really does produce output of a sufficient quality.

Take a look at the Brother HL-5240 that produces very good quality output at a reasonable price. You should be able to get one for around £165.00.

Peter Crosland

[The Natural Philosopher]

Generally because the office gets bigger and needs more print trays and more speed.

However we used to downgrade them to 'workgoup printers' from 'main printers' and hang on to em.

[Mary Fisher]

Fair enough, but I'd like to recycle it for my own use. I'bve grown attached to it :-)

So it isn't re-cyclable!

Mary

[Tony Bryer]

SDA is a 1.3 person firm but we have a Canon GP 6-bin copy printer. It cost me just under £5K seven years ago, toner and servicing on contract at 1p per side. I thought long and hard about spending so much but have never regretted it (one for the Andy Hall school of thinking). It's done 320K sides so far, but as it's classed as a workgroup printer with a duty cycle of 40K per month it's really only just run in.

There's a similar unit on eBay currently standing at £52

[Owain]

At some point it'll need new toner, which is about £40-50.

A new printer is less than £60 (a Konica Minolta from Misco).

I had to buy a new printer because I can't get toner for the old IBM one. It's not my fault the cartridges last about 6 years ...

Owain

[Andy Hall]

[Andy Hall]

Don't tell HP that. They make most of their profits from inks and toners.

[Tony Bryer]

Not really: A3 gets used a bit for the occasional plan, posters for various non business activities etc. Back in my plan drawing days in the late 1980s I got an A3 copier and switched to drawing on A3 so I could do the copying myself instead of going to the dyeline shop. In those days I really needed it - now it's a bonus.

What sold this machine to me was the six bins - two standard, the lower four a £1000 option. Before it I had a Lexmark Optra laser and wore out the duplexing, so a printer with good duplexing was a given. My budget was £2K then I saw this one which meant I could dispose of the standalone copier. We run with six colours of A4 in the six bins - we print the product leaflets for our three programs on gold, purple and green, then there's white, blue for order forms sent to customers and ivory for company letters and invoices. Another user would choose to mix paper sizes and/or headed/unheaded paper.

It took a little effort to find out how to select the various bins from our own software - no one in the programming groups knew any more than how it should be done. One of my apps generates mailouts to customers, printing a cover letter, the appropriate leaflets (i.e not for products they have current versions for) and an order form. It's impressive to see these collated mail sets coming out with a mix of colours ready to fold and stuff.

If I had had any use for them I could have also have bought the fax, document feeder, collator and stapler options.

Canon nearly didn't get a customer as I only found out late in the day that cash buyers can expect 50%+ off list price. Got to make those leasing deals look attractive somehow

[Andy Hall]

This is all a good set of uses. You don't have to do that may runs yourself vs. using a print shop to cover the cost, and the convenience is very clear.

[Peter Crosland]

Yes it is if you send it to a waste site it should go into the stream of material that extracts the any valuable metals and toxic chemicals such at cadmium. Realistically it does not make economic sense to expend money on a printer of that age and which has done duty so far beyond its design life because there is a strong probability that you will spend the money and still not get acceptable results. If, as you say, cost is not an issue then get yourself a modern laser printer that should produce better quality and be made in a much more environmentally friendly way.

Peter Crosland

[Andy Hall]

It *should* do.

The reality, for those on Planet Earth, is that anything that the pikeys running the waste site think that they can use or sell gets taken away by them, while everything else ends up in landfill.....

[Pete C]

cheers, Pete.

[Dave]

I am looking into buying a half decent colour laser printer, so thanks for the warning. HP are off my list.

Dave

[Adrian]

Dave ( [e-mail]) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

It's hardly unique to HP. ALL printers are loss-leaders for the consumables.

HP are one of the better manufacturers, although - as with any - the bottom end of the range aren't necessarily all that.

[Owain]

No different from any of the others.

When a new printer with short-life cartridges costs the same as a set of full-life cartridges, there's no point (other than environmental) in buying cartridges.

Welcome to the world of the disposable colour laser printer.

Owain

[Andy Hall]

I wouldn't use that criterion.

All of the vendors use the same razor blade marketing.

Actually HP makes very good products and has very good backup as well. Certainly over the lifeitme of the product, you will spend more of the total outlay on consumables than the original printer. This is especially true of colour and is true of all brands.

This was something that the photocopier manufacturers discovered decades ago. Put in the machine for next to nothing and charge a seemingly small amount for the copies.

It used to be said that Xerox never came up with anything original, but this disproved that point.