Samsung Laser Printers Printing Faded Black Documents

[geokilla]

So I have two Samsung printers. One is a CLX-3175 and the other is a ML-2955DW. Both of them have toner but they are both painting faded print jobs. Word documents are getting printed in gray with certain areas lighter or darker than others. Is there a way to fix this? I looked into the printer properties and unlike inkjet, there is no head cleaning or head alignment or anything like that. So what can I do to fix this? I don't want to buy a new printer if I don't need to considering we barely use it.



Edit: I should mention that they are connected to two different computers. It's just that they seem to have this problem at the same time, with the CLX-3175 printing worse print jobs than the ML-2955DW.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

In order of expense: If you have toner but getting light prints:

1) Clean the drum. (Should be a cleaning cycle built into the printer. Sometimes there's a lever to swipe in the machine. Check the manual.)

2) Try a new ream of paper. (It soaks up humid air. Damp paper doesn't work well. Since it hit both printers at the same time, and it's spring, this is my bet.)

3) Replace the drum. (they last longer than toner, but eventually wear out, and also can succumb to age. They can also be spoiled by expsure to sunlight. Sometimes these are built into the toner cartridge - in this case, remanufactured or refilled toner cartridges are using used drums which may not last as long as the toner supply.)

4) Replace the fuser - if the fuser is not running at the correct temperature (broken thermostat, broken heating element) it may prevent toner from melting to paper. For most consumer laser printers, this is really "replace the printer" time.

 

[Martin62]

So I have two Samsung printers. One is a CLX-3175 ......

I don't think that fading prints is sooo related to a drum problem. I had to replace the drum when I had stripes and darker areas on my print. Another think was "repeating print" areas (looks like image is repeating on the same page although faded: again: this was not the drum, which I bought on similiar advice. It was the transfer belt that need replacement.
And this time I suffered from faded black print: the left side of the print, about 5 cm was ok, and than it faded to the right side, with a little increase again on the far right. Toner was still at 30% and Samsung original. Prints were basically useless. Color was ok, and this lead to my solution try.
Guess what: also not the drum. Here I replaced the black toner cartridge, this time I bought a cheap replacement and the print is outstanding perfect.

So although the drum can be a reason for failure I own now two still good drums because way to often people repeat: replace the drum. Keep in mind that this is one of the expensiest parts to replace. I would not start with that in the future.

Coming back to the faded print: toner probable has a limited lifetime. My printer is under the roof and it gets about 35-40 °C in the summer here. That may not be perfect for the toner when not used much.
But that was a main reason for buying a laser printer. I could not stand any more the cleaning of ink-printers which after a while did not work at all.
So a little of that problem may exist also for laser printers.

My CLX-3175N is about 9 years old and I had to replace (toner not counted):
Transfer Belt: 1 time
Imaging Unit: 2 times, but one time was useless as the problem was the Transfer Belt

Todays statistics:
Total Page Count : 956 / 2393 Page(s) (Color/Mono)
Fuser Life : 6206 Page(s)
Transfer Roller Life : 3342 Page(s)
Tray Roller Life : 3349 Page(s)
Total Image Count : 6230 Image(s)
Imaging Unit Life : 800 Image(s)
Transfer Belt Life : 294 Image(s)
ADF Scan Page Count : 462 Page(s)
Platen Scan Page Count : 1090 Page(s)