Brother laser printer prints have ghost images

November 5, 2023 3:49 PM

I've got a Brother HL-3170 series color laser printer. Lately, my prints have been looking like this in the link: https://ibb.co/Y3Zg8z2 I've tried cleaning the corona wires on the toner cartridges and removing and re-inserting them. They're fairly new cartridges that had been working fine until recently. They aren't official Brother cartridges, but 3rd-party remanufactured "E-Z Ink" brand from Amazon. Can anyone help me determine what component I need to replace/repair/clean?
posted by beammeup4 to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Best answer: When this kind of thing happened to me, it was the imaging drum dying. It is usually available as a replacement part.
posted by aramaic at 4:14 PM on November 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

Also, just a general life-tip when dealing with repeated errors coming from machines that contain many rotating parts; measure the distance between the errors, then divide by 3.14. That'll tell you the diameter of the rotating object that's likely responsible for the error.
posted by aramaic at 4:25 PM on November 5, 2023 [17 favorites]

Best answer: Yeah, probably the drum, I believe.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:49 PM on November 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

The manual has some very specific guidance on troubleshooting a number of print issues. They mention a few other things to check under "ghosting" besides the drum unit.
posted by Aleyn at 5:25 PM on November 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Most likely it's the drum. It's a wear item, so replace that first.
posted by kschang at 7:26 PM on November 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

The drum is more expensive than a toner cartridge, but when it's time for it to go, there is no other choice.
posted by tmdonahue at 5:32 AM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Brother HL3170 has four drum units (one for each color). In your sample image, all four colors (CMYK) are showing "ghosting". The repeats look too frequent to be the transfer belt. It's certainly possible that all four drum units have an issue, but before shotgunning all the drums, I'd take a look at the fuser. Repetitive ghosting of all colors down a page is typical of a worn or dirty fuser. It's possible that it's worn out (the teflon coating on the hot roller or fuser belt fails, and then toner sticks to it, causing repeat ghosting) or it may just be dirty.

Printing on labels (especially if they were labels intended for inkjet, not laser printers) or heavy card stock, while choosing incorrect paper weight settings can quickly dirty up a fuser. When you tell your laser printer "card stock" or "labels", the printer adjusts many settings including fuser temperature and engine speed; usually running hotter and slower for heavier stock, and cooler and faster for plain paper. If you printed card stock or labels on the "plain paper" setting, you may have accumulated unfused toner. If you tried to run inkjet labels through your laser printer, you may have caused damage to the fuser.

If you're not comfortable servicing it yourself and removing the fuser to clean or replace it, try sending a print job of 10-20 blank pages, and use the heaviest paper weight setting in your printer driver. Card stock, ultra heavy, whatever it may be. If the first page shows ghosting from your previous print job, and as the subsequent blank pages of this test job come through, that ghosting gets lighter and lighter until it's gone... the issue is almost certainly in your fuser. You may have just fixed it by running blanks to get all that unfused toner out of the fuser, but if the fuser is excessively worn or damaged, that cleaning will be rather short-lived.
posted by xedrik at 10:08 PM on November 6, 2023

Print blank sheets until you get no ghosting, to print a document in color like your test print, and then a blank sheet.

Are you still getting ghosting on your blank sheet?

When you rub hard on the test print does the toner smear at all?
posted by gregr at 8:50 AM on November 7, 2023