Dell 3100cn color laser printer help!!!!

[Compman55]

Picked up one of these for a steal on the local CL. Has 3800 total page count. Problem is all but magenta are refilled toners. The drum looks original. I am having some print quality issues when doing color. Do I start with the drum or toners. I get streaks and blotches when printing color, but not when printing black. Drum has some fine scratches in its surface in the same area the streaks are happening, and its internal flat belt thing looks in bad shape. I don;t understand why it is not happening on the black.

Otherwise for the price it makes a nice black printer and has low page count.

 

[Lemon law]

As someone who is somewhat ignorant about color Laser printers, I had hoped to avoid commenting on this thread. But still I believe any post on P&N deserves an answer, so I will take a shot in the dark.

And say its my understanding that monochrome B/W laser technology is tee totally different than color laser technology.

Because color lasers become 4 totally different technologies in one, in pass one the color laser uses one drum and cartridges to print B/W, in turn two it uses another drum and color toner cartridges to print the first of cyan, magenta and yellow, and at the end of the day, the color laser makes four separate passes, using different drums and different toner cartridges at each step.

Maybe I am FOS on this, but maybe I am not, I never claimed to be expert here.

 

[almer]

I have the same printer and using original cartridges. Still having similar problems printing in color. Usually it ocures whebn I print large size color prints. The strick are not noticible when you print small color print.

 

[Compman55]

I have spent over 4 hrs reading and pretty much fixed my problem. Its called the IBT belt on the drum unit, it gets rubbed by the top cover. You need to pull the drum unit out of the printer, and remove the (6) screws holding on the top cover. It is actually the cover that goes over the belt. Remove cover and discard. Reinstall the drum unit and voila, problem solved. Now it is just a tad harder to get the unit in and out. Also I removed the two covers on the front nose of the unit, and blew out all the waste toner which helps keep the drum itself from getting scratched. Make sure to put these covers back on though!!!!! I got it printing 96% perfect now.

The damage was already done to the belt from the damn cover rubbing it. I have ordered a new drum unit and will immeidatly rip the top cover off before it causes damage.

The real problem is the top cover has cross bracing ribs molded into the plastic. They bow / sag over time and come in contact with the IBT belt. This wipes the toner off of it while printing and also immidiatly puts wear marks into the belt. This will in turn wear the drum, and thus ruin the entire assy. The other problem is the waste resivoir in the front nose of the drum unit is not big enough. It gets jammed up with waste toner and then the drum gets all scratched up.

People complain about this printer being junk, and the drums do not last. Yes that is true but with these two modds, it can be an excellent printer, and you can extend the life of the drum.

To recap:
1.) remove the top cover from the drum unit and discard.
2.) pull the two side covers off the front nose of the drum unit and blow the waste toner out every 1000 pages. Use compressed air outside.

Also note that it is worth the extra few minutes to make 100% sure the toners are seated, locked in and latched to the rotating carousel. If you make a mistake here, you can strip the gears out of the carousel and render the printer useless. If the toners are stiff to latch, remove and excercise the lock lever. Mine were super stiff and jammed with toner.

 

[Compman55]

UPDATE 3/4/11

For those who have unsolved verticle lines, and if by changing the drum cartridge does NOT resolve the problem, use the cleaning rod 20 times. If still no improvment, the laser lense / mirror is dirty proceed below:

Open fuser door, unlatch the fuser unit and remove. Open front & top cover and remove drum unit. Tape a q-tip to a thin round plastic / wood stick. About 12" long will do. Needs to be no larger than 1/8" diameter. While standing at the back of the printer, move the internal cleaning rod in and out while looking into the printer for it. You will see a very shiny mirror / lense under the cleaning rod, this is the laser lense that you will need to clean by your newly made q-tip device. Put 1-2 drops of water on the q-tip and clean this mirror. You may need to move the cleaning rod around to get all areas of the mirror. Change to a new dry q-tip and repeat 2 more times until it is dry & spotless.

Reassemble printer and use the cleaning rod 5 more times in case a hair or a tiny bit of powder from the drum gets on it. Your streaks, lines, etc should now be gone. This area is not desinged to be cleaned by hand, however the cleaning rod will not do a good enough job is it gets too bad. If nicotene gets on this, the internal cleaning rod will do absolutly nothing.

If you have a source on spare cleaning pads, you can buy a few and use one wet. Just make sure to quickly switch to a dry pad and run the rod in and out a few times. I have not found a source for these.

What I do not like about this printer is the fact that when the carousel rotates, toner spills onto the laser mirror / lense. So over 100 pages or so, you need to use the cleaning rod. Very poor design.