Questions for those who know how color laser printers work

I have an old and out of production Dell C1760cn color laser printer. It is many years old and has never needed any maintenance other than toner cartridge replacements. It prints mostly B/W pages, but occasionally full color ones with pages that use colored fonts and/or color photos. The printed results have always been surprisingly and consistently good.

Recently when printing B/W full page width text documents with 1/4 inch L/R non-justified margins the letters close to the right margin are printed very lightly or only partially. All other letters on the pages are printed OK. I took this to mean one or more of the rollers inside the printer was bad, and therefore I'd be in the market for a new printer sometime soon.

However, when the same document is printed in blue text all the letters are printed OK. So this suggests the problem is not with a roller, but something else. So that is the question - what could be causing the problem? And is there a fix other than replacing the printer with a new one?

Sometimes the toner cartridges don't distribute toner evenly. You can remove the cartridge and GENTLY rock it side to side. Re-install the cartridge. I used to have to do this with my long-departed HP laser printer.

Birk said:

I have an old and out of production Dell C1760cn color laser printer. It is many years old and has never needed any maintenance other than toner cartridge replacements. It prints mostly B/W pages, but occasionally full color ones with pages that use colored fonts and/or color photos. The printed results have always been surprisingly and consistently good.

Recently when printing B/W full page width text documents with 1/4 inch L/R non-justified margins the letters close to the right margin are printed very lightly or only partially. All other letters on the pages are printed OK. I took this to mean one or more of the rollers inside the printer was bad, and therefore I'd be in the market for a new printer sometime soon.

However, when the same document is printed in blue text all the letters are printed OK. So this suggests the problem is not with a roller, but something else. So that is the question - what could be causing the problem? And is there a fix other than replacing the printer with a new one?

Click to expand...

I think you can still buy toner cartridges but getting other parts like the drum unit is going to be difficult (I looked on Dell site and could not see one but there is a lot of info to be fair). The problem is diagnosing the specific issue and I suspect your issue is just old age (printer not you). In the end, it is like trying to fix an old car and sooner or later, you bite the bullet and buy a newer cars.

If a simple rocking of the toner cartridges as suggested by @garlin does not work, I rather doubt you can do an economic repair.

Of course, new colour laser printers are not cheap but there are now some pretty good ink jet printers that use ink in tanks rather than more expensive ink cartridges that can be fairly economical. I looked hard into getting an A3 colour laser jet and concluded they were just too expensive but of course, they are less hassle maintenance wise. I needed an A3 printer for engineering drawings.

In the end, I compromised and bought a wifi Brother b/w A4 laser printer for general use and a reltively cheap wifi A3 Epson inkjet for use when I need colour or A3 prints.

The sum of the two printers was about only 33% of an A3 colour laser printer.

Of course, A4 colour laser printers are much cheaper so the benefit of two printers (as I went for) will probably be somewhat less. Of course, the advantage of two printers is if one fails, the other will still work (unless really unlucky) albeit colour may be temporarily unavailable.

I am not suggesting my solution is suitable for you as my key driver was need for A3 printing. In the end, it all comes down to usage patterns - you really have to look at alternative configurations and their pros and cons.

garlin: yes, I understand your point. But for my printer each cartridge emits toner via a small hole at the bottom. So I don't think rocking or shaking the toner cart will have any beneficial effect. It's not clear to me how the printer gets the toner across the entire current print line - but it does.​

cereberus: yes, I get your point. I started out with a wide Epson inkjet years ago, and went so far to add tubing from 5 (or was it 6) bottles of ink for the darned thing. This got to be too much of a hassle, which is when I switched to laser. So I'm a but reluctant to go back to liquid ink. I may ve to gite the bullet and pop for a new color laser.​

The logic for the rocking the cartridge was the possibility of toner getting clumped inside, and shaking the clumps out.

From your descriptions it would seem to be rollers, brushes/transfer rollers or whatever the mechanism is for spreading out the toner powder inside the printer on to the photosensitive drum, there are fixing rollers after that.
Possibly toner going off after so many years, most likely the Colours rather than the Black.

You may get away with just cleaning the rollers/brushes/transfer rollers, fixing rollers etc. The photosensitive drums I don't think can be cleaned, you will need a replacement. Also maybe other rollers if the surfaces have aged.

Birk said:

have an old and out of production Dell C1760cn color laser printer....

Recently when printing B/W full page width text documents with 1/4 inch L/R non-justified margins the letters close to the right margin are printed very lightly or only partially. All other letters on the pages are printed OK. I took this to mean one or more of the rollers inside the printer was bad, and therefore I'd be in the market for a new printer sometime soon.

However, when the same document is printed in blue text all the letters are printed OK. So this suggests the problem is not with a roller, but something else. So that is the question - what could be causing the problem? And is there a fix other than replacing the printer with a new one?

Click to expand...

According to Google's AI Overview:

This is the manual for for the C1760nw. It has a large troubleshooting section, with Print Quality Problems starting on page 213.

Birk said:

I don't think rocking or shaking the toner cart will have any beneficial effect

Click to expand...

garlin said:

The logic for the rocking the cartridge was the possibility of toner getting clumped inside, and shaking the clumps out.

Click to expand...

It's actually part of Dell's instructions for changing the toner cartridge (page 190).

Installing a Toner Cartridge
1 Unpack a new toner cartridge of the desired color and shake it five to six times to distribute the toner evenly.

Click to expand...

If the cartridge doesn't fix it, you may need the drum that is usually a separate item unless it's an entry level printer. Also, the rollers that feed the paper over the drum may have a spring problem.

The printer is 9-10 years old, I'd seriously consider a replacement before spending a lot of money trying to fix this one.

I have the Brother MVC-L3780CDW AIO printer, it does two-sided scanning, has a document feeder, and of course two-sided printing. It offers WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth and USB connectivity. Might be time to upgrade.