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assassin

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Consequences of printing without paper?
« on: August 12, 2010, 01:43:38 PM »
i have a laser printer (NEC SuperScript 870) that i finally replaced the toner and photoconductor modules for back in February, and it was working plenty fine after that.  then in April, i made a dumb mistake.  the printer ran out of paper mid-job, so i go get more, and put it in.  but when it was just starting to grab the paper, i changed my mind and pulled the paper out fairly gently, because in the past with other printers, i've had them resume with nonsense or stuff shifted over, and i figured i'd abort the job and reprint the needed pages.

the printer proceeded to try and print a page without paper, sounding somewhat different than normal, though no hideous noises.  after several seconds, it throws up the red Warning light, as opposed to just the more benign simple Paper Out light.  :whoa:  i can't remember if any other lights were on.

since around that time, i've regularly had pages print with a faint gray vertical streak running down the page, roughly in the center.  it's not perfectly straight, moving side-to-side a bit.  it's also far from continuous, unless i print a page with solid color (versus my normal mostly-white pages).  i got rid of it temporarily by printing a few all-black pages (and several solid gray pages), then trying normal pages afterward, but the streak came back a couple weeks later, without nothing printed in between.

i can't say with 100% certainty that the streaking started immediately after my blunder, but it's pretty damned close.

my question is, to anybody who knows how printers work: can printing with nothing outright damage a laser printer?  it was obviously moronic of me to do, i won't be repeating it, and the red light is never a good sign.  but that light can show up in plenty of non-fatal cases.

i'm trying to figure out whether there could have been actual damage here (possibly to a brand-new part to boot!), or if there's just some lingering toner residue.

also, any idea how to get rid of it?

thanks.
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Lenophis

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Re: Consequences of printing without paper?
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2010, 02:54:23 PM »
Can't say I've heard of that, the extent of my problems are the ink carts drying up so I constantly had to get more because we never used it enough (this was 10 years ago). I've been without a printer for 8 years (it went to someone else, cause I had no use for it), so unfortunately, I don't think I can help. Does the streak appear if windows tries to print a test page?
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assassin

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Re: Consequences of printing without paper?
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2010, 03:53:19 PM »
i haven't tried a Windows test page, but the streaking does happen when i issue a test page from the printer itself (done by holding down a button for several seconds).

the idea of going without a printer for 8 years would frighten me.  :scared:  i don't print much either, except for records of online banking and eBay transactions.  (and for test pages after getting the new printer parts, and now more test and M$ Paint pages after encountering the problem.)  still, i'd feel lost without at least _something_ to print to.  but that doesn't justify the massive quantity of printers in this house:

1) Epson Stylus Color 600 (inkjet) -- not working, either missing ink, or massive dust collected from sitting on floor for eons murdered it.
2) Epson Stylus Color 850 (inkjet) -- working, but less economical than laser, and spends AGES calibrating and cleaning itself when you turn it on.  with its heavy rituals, i'm starting to think it's a member of a religious cult, or is a baseball player with myriad superstitions.
3) HP Officejet d145 (inkjet and money pit) -- all-in-one printer/copier/scanner/fax.  versatile, but problematic.  HP separated the printheads from the ink cartridges to supposedly save customers money as printheads last longer than ink, but the printheads don't last nearly as long as estimated, and they're expensive.  the color printheads somehow wore out despite printing barely any color pages -- can they dry out like ink does?  anyway, read the Amazon reviews on this printer for a laugh.
4) NEC SuperScript 870 (laser) -- great printer, had since 1998.  sidelined from ~2005 - Feb 2010, after i stupidly left the photoconductor module exposed to light for long time after opening up printer to clean inside and check toner.  was perfect after replacing parts, still good even with the mild streaking.
5) Lexmark E238 (laser) - got it earlier this year for free.  low on toner, but all indications are it's a great printer, far faster than the NEC as it's 7 years newer.

my family has the same disease with ballpoint pens; we're drowning in them.  it seems anything that can be used to print, we collect en masse.

hope you enjoyed the unsolicited list. :P  anyway, i feel the same way about color printing as you do about printing in general.  but does it bother you knowing there will be no record of your existence if you lose all your data storage? :P
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bond697

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Re: Consequences of printing without paper?
« Reply #3 on: August 13, 2010, 12:30:32 AM »
i would say that yes, it sort of can damage the printer, though it's definitely fixable.  i'm not sure how familiar you are with laser printers, so i'll try to explain as simply as i can...  anyway, the paper moves through the printer and eventually comes to a point where the toner is applied to it and then "fused" to the paper by the fuser through high temperatures(this is why laser printer pages are warm).  anyway, without the paper, the toner would be applied to the part of the printer right under the spot where the paper usually has it done.  then, the fuser would heat up, sort of fusing the toner onto the printer, but at the same time, it is sitting right "in the open" and will mark any pages that pass over it while the fuser is heated up.  the streaking pretty much completely confirms this, since the paper is moving over the mis-applied toner and the fuser heating up will cause some to be applied to every page that passes through.  likely no damage, you're just re-heating the toner every single time which is causing discoloration.

your best bet would be to pop open the printer and see if you can clean it out with a warm, damp cloth, unless you don't mind the streaking.  i'm sure that if you look on nec's website, you can find some service manuals on how to take the thing apart.  outside of that, i'm sure you could find a repair place to handle it for you if you don't trust yourself not to break anything/put it back together properly.  my company does things like this because we have one guy that is an absolute wiz with printers, and i'm sure there are lots of others out there like that.  hell, i've taken a few completely apart and rebuilt them, and i really don't work on them much.  if i can manage to dismantle big laser printers, i'm sure you can manage with what you've got.
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assassin

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Re: Consequences of printing without paper?
« Reply #4 on: August 13, 2010, 09:04:12 AM »
Quote from: bond697
i'm not sure how familiar you are with laser printers,

somewhat.  the Wikipedia article and some other article/posting i read made it fairly accessible to a newbie.

thanks for the explanation; it's very helpful.

on my printer, the toner module is near the front and fairly high up, the photoconductor module is further down and slightly further back.  then further down and further back is a black roller, and i think the paper gets the image put on it when it runs between that roller and the photoconductor's roller (if not, the black roller is just for feeding.)  then the fuser rollers are further back yet and significantly higher up, so i assume there must be some additional, unseen rollers in between the fuser and the black roller, in order to move the paper upwards.

do you think the stray toner is on the black roller?  and if it is, would it linger there only, or would it also transfer to the intermediate rollers leading to the fuser unit?  the reason i ask is that i can reach the black roller if i open the printer lid and remove the toner and photoconductor modules.  but i'd have no idea how to get the intermediate rollers without really dismantling the thing.  i can also reach parts of the fuser rollers by opening the lid, but i dunno if those should even be touched/cleaned.

for that matter, i'm a bit afraid of taking out anything from the printer at all, since my photoconductor module is nearly brand new -- just ~230 pages into its 20,000-page lifecycle -- and sensitive to light.

your explanation definitely makes sense, and i'm relieved to learn there's probably no actual damage.  the streaking itself doesn't bother me much visually; it was moreso the fear that i might've ruined the printer, particularly brand-new part(s), by being an idiot.

how long would the stray toner take to deplete and disappear normally?  it has to be finite.  i've done nearly 100 pages since the blunder, but it's still not gone.  yesterday, i consulted the instruction manual, and it says that in the event of toner spotting and/or streaking (which can reportedly happen due to a paper jam), try printing about 20 blank sheets to "clear the paper path".  i did 28 (printing a bunch of blank canvases in Microsoft Paint), and it seems lessened, but not entirely gone.  and it remains to be seen whether the streaking'll return like it did last week after i thought i'd removed it (although my prior method of printing solid dark sheets was ass-backwards, even if temporarily effective :/).

in your experience, is printing blank sheets effective at dealing with this problem?
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bond697

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Re: Consequences of printing without paper?
« Reply #5 on: August 13, 2010, 09:25:58 AM »
to be honest, it's tough to say exactly where the toner might be.  if it's coming out all the way across the page, then it's likely not just the rollers, some might be stick to the plastic parts in the printer too.  if it's just weird streaking  straight down the page, then it's almost definitely just the rollers and you can likely buy a maintenance kit and swap all the rollers out with no issues- if you don't mind doing that.  as for the manual's instructions for removing toner spotting, that's for little bits of toner.  this is a full page's worth, which is a fair amount more.  the streaking has lessened, but isn't gone, because the toner didn't disperse completely evenly.  You end up left with some "thicker" spots of toner that take longer to wear down/off.  you might want to try calling nec and tell them that you printed without realizing that the printer was out of paper and that it didn't error out and now you're getting toner streaking.  they would probably be more helpful than i am-either telling how long you'll have to run paper through, or exactly how to take it apart, or they'll have it sent back for repair.  i usually work with hp stuff, so i'm not sure exactly how nec stuff works, but the fuser is usually located in the lower back on smaller lasers and is held in place by like a half dozen screws, if you want to try removing it and seeing if you can see any blackening from the toner powder.

if it was my printer i'd be taking it apart, but since that really isn't an option, either calling nec or running a lot of paper through the printer would be good bets.  eventually you'll wear down the toner enough that it stops transferring, but i honestly couldn't tell you how long it would take.  you can keep running the same few sheets through, though, so at least you won't be wasting much paper.  it's definitely not ruined, at least.
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assassin

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Re: Consequences of printing without paper?
« Reply #6 on: August 15, 2010, 10:41:26 AM »
no go on working direct with NEC, as it stopped making printers awhile back, stopped selling supplies for them on March 30 2008, and doesn't offer support beyond the files on its website:

http://support.necam.com/printers/support.cfm

the SuperScript 870 is supposedly very similar to the Minolta Pageworks 8 or 8L, and uses the same photoconductor and possibly the same toner module.  but i can't find mention of these printers on Konica Minolta's website, so it's very unlikely they'd provide support either.

i can't find any maintenance or roller kits on eBay, which is probably the best place to find parts for a printer of this age.  it'd likely be too expensive for my tastes, anyway.

i'm sure you're right that cleaning the rollers directly would be more efficient, but for now i'll continue with the blank page printing route, as that's within my skillset. :)  11 pages have printed since my last post without any visible streaking.  i'll post periodic updates, but the first one probably won't come for at least a few weeks, as i wanna avoid "it went away" / "no, it's back" / "yay, it's gone again" / etc.

thanks for your help on this.
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