OT -- Lexmark Optra E312L printer grabs paper

On Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:59:23 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Ignoramus4185 quickly quoth:

Pull the case off (no easy task on most printers) and clean the rubber parts with alcohol. Avoid the rubbing alcohol with glycerin in it.

Who has experience with the new color laser printers?

I'm looking for a new laser printer and am considering a color laser. Does anyone have any info for me? Models I'm looking at are the HP

No experience at all, except looking at the combined prices of either three or four separate cartridges .

If you can write off the cost, go for it. I can't.

Cheers Trevor Jones

I have isopropyl alcohol. I will check it out.

Picked up a CLP300N at the beginning of the year for SWMBO. It seems pretty good.. the cartridges are small and not as expensive as some, so it looks pretty good for occasional use. Of course that means they run out faster if you do a lot of printing. Quite small and cheap. It's by no means a photo printer, but okay for 'colorful' printing, just not 'color' printing. Most important for this application, it's physically small. Did tend to stink a fair bit for the first while. I won't buy another inkjet (too many expensive cartridges dried up on me). The paper tray system seems a bit weird. If you don't need Ethernet, it's even cheaper, about $250. Beware, like most it comes with "starter" cartridges that are not even full. 8-( Unfortunately, you can't yet buy a tabloid/A3 color laser for anything resembling a reasonable price ($3K-$6K).

speff wrote: Unfortunately, you can't yet buy a tabloid/A3

Heh heh! I saw a color laser sitting on our loading dock, next to the dumpster. This is where people put stuff too good to trash, but no longer needed. But, I figured something HAD to be wrong with it. It was still there the 2nd day, so I reluctantly dragged it home, figurinbg if it was seriously busted I'd just strip it for all the shafts, gears, belts, bearings, etc. that the thing was FULL of. Way more than a monochrome laser printer.

Anyway, I got it home and was astounded that it almost worked. It semed to start printing in the middle of the page, and the output was smeared. After two days of net research, I hit the mother lode, a site (fixyourprinter.com) that descibed the exact symptom. There was a little felt/rubber pad that absorbs the bump when a solenoid relaxes, and it gets pushed out of position by operation. I had to tear the whole thing apart to get to the solenoid, but it was just like they said, I put the pad back where it belonged, and the printer produces GREAT color images on ordinary paper. I have yet to try it on clay-coated paper, but I suspect it will look even better.

I also found out on that site how to defeat the elaborate refill-prevention scheme they use (blowable fuses in every cartridge) that counts pages and kills your cartridges before they are actually empty.

The printer is a Minolta/QMS 2200, I looked up the street price and was surprised it was so cheap, about $600 at office max.

Jon

Did you recently change to a different paper supply? Some paper likes to stick together.

I have some nice (26 lb bright white) paper that was originally bought for my inkjet that does exactly that in my Brother HL-5140 Laser. The cheapo Office Max 20 lb paper that came with it (demo model) worked fine. So I just single sheet load this stuff when I want a really nice printout. It seems to be a static cling type of problem.

I used to service the old dot matrix printers and paper from different sources made a big difference back then too. If you still have some paper around that worked good I would try some tests with it if cleaning up the rollers doesn't help.

correction

I've been very happy with my Epson Aculaser CX11NF. I've had it for

According to Leon Fisk :

Or -- is the humidity higher than usual where the printer it? (A lot of that going around the country right now.) The higher humidity could cause paper layers to stick together.

Good Luck, DoN.

I decided to buy another printer, as I am tired of this one. I bought a used HP 4050N with 78k printed pages count, from a local ebay seller. The one we have at work has about 180k pages and is still going strong.

It works much better than lexmark, prints a lot faster etc. Comparing them is like comparing a harbor freight mini-mill to a Bridgeport.

It set up under my linux in under 2 minutes using system-config-printer. Works great without eveh having to reload my firefox, etc. This new printer is networked with regular Ethernet.

Indeed, DoN, the humidity is higher right now.

astray. That is the correct URL, and a really wonderful resource!

Jon

On Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:51:43 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Wayne Cook quickly quoth:

I'm leaning heavily toward the Samsung CLP600N now. I shied away from the HP 3600n when I saw the 100W idling power and the $160 toner cart prices. The Samsung consumes just 35W, is 1/3 cheaper outright and for consumables, and has PS drivers.

-- Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil, and still more the man who is indifferent to everything. -- Johann K. Lavater

Not tabloid/A3 though. ;-)

I also resist considering a printer that weights more than I do, just to get B size drawings out of the thing.

Be sure to compare price per page on the toner. Yes my refills cost a good bit but I got nearly a year out of the first partially filled black cartridge that came with the printer. The full cartridge that's in there now will probably last me a couple of years or more. I've also had to replace only one of the color cartridges since buying it. The others are showing low toner but they've been doing that for 6 months and are still working.

On Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:17:11 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Wayne Cook quickly quoth:

Ayup, thanks. I do look at total cost of ownership.

Two different Canuckistani firms offer the refill kits, complet with tool and smart chips, to refill all four carts for 4,000 sheets each. Cost is just about the same as a new single cart from HP.

The original 2,000 sheet carts should last me a long while. I was getting about 3,500 sheets out of the old HP5P and have put only 5 new carts in it in 12-13 years now.

I'd look at the cost of the refills. That might be the telling story. A difference in looks or model might be a long and high cost.

Mart> On Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:59:23 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm,

Ok. Just wanted to make sure.

It's easy to add a duplex unit to that printer, like at

Linux CUPS controls duplex output via "lpoptions -o sides=one-sided", "lpoptions -o sides=two-sided-long-edge", etc.

Yes, it is very interesting. I would use the duplex mode for big documents only. Accidentally, I was looking at some duplexers today.

I added those CUPS options to my notes file so that I can use them later if I do get a duplexer.