Re: Miraculous button makes things work again.

On Sat, 01 Feb 2025 18:19:53 -0800, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 01 Feb 2025 18:39:11 -0500, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
>

On Sat, 01 Feb 2025 09:57:51 -0800, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>
wrote:
>

On Sat, 01 Feb 2025 11:07:18 -0500, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
>

Very interesting in general, and I just bought a Brother MFC-L8905CDW.
Have you encountered any of those yet?
>
What the above replaced was an ancient Brother MFC-9840CDW, and I did
have and repair many problems, and got 15 years out of it.

>
I retired from the daily grind just after the CZU fire and Covid.  I
currently don't see many repairs on larger and heavier printers
because I would need to carry the printers up and down 50 stairs to
work on them.  I also don't have the necessary bench space available.
My current customers are mostly home users who normally don't need or
purchase big and heavy business class printers.

>
I tend to buy the industrial stuff, but at their lower end, because
the extra expense is worth it for better quality.

>
For printers, I buy new printers for my customers and inherit their
previous printer for free or at least a substantial discount on my
labor charges. 

Here I am both customer and tech.

An industrial printer is what's used for commercial production
printing.  These are well above the needs of the typical small
business. 

Yes, and these cost tens of thousands of dollars minimum.  Only large
companies have these.

 For example, what small business needs a printer that can
continuously print bills, promotional literature, tickets, etc all day
long?  Running a business class printer continuously like that would
kill it rather soon.  At this time, business class can perhaps print
25,000 pages before requiring all the plastic and rubber parts need to
be replaced. 

That would be a the all-plastic wonders.  I've gotten far more from
the Brother, and from the legacy HP printers that proceeded it.

My first laser was a HP LaserJet 5MP bought in 1996 for about $1K, as
I recall.  It needed few repairs, although I did upgrade the memory to
max when that became cheap.  I finally recycled it circa 2015.  It
still worked, but with crippling limitations, like inability to handle
most modern print file formats.  And sunlight had made some critical
plastic components to become brittle and crack.

  I've maintained ancient LaserJet 4 and 4 Si printers,
which printed about 125,000 pages before needing any major service.
Yes, that would be nice for home use, but certainly overkill.  HP and
others realized that such a long life printer would not be a good
thing for a company that made and sold printers, so they redesigned
the stamped steel tank of a printer into a lower cost but shorter life
all plastic toy.

Yes.  But I've found the Brother units quite suitable.  Also, this is
not just a printer, it's an all-in-one units.

Sometimes the industrial stuff is cheaper as well.  Like for instance
metro wire shelves.

>
<https://metro.com/commercial/>
I have several rows of those shelves (on rollers) in what used to be
my bedroom.  When I retired and closed my formerly palatial office,
all the storage racks and most of the junk on them, were transported
intact into my house.  The #1 project for the last 4 years has been to
purge the junk and get rid of the industrial warehouse decor.
>

And one of my selection criteria was weight, with heavier preferred
(meaning more metal and less plastic).

>
As I get older, cost has become the primary criteria.  I don't expect
or want to live longer than my furniture and toys. 

I also won't have the energy or maybe ability to do much repairing as
I get grayer and grayer. 

I haven't worked on any MFC-L8905CDW printers but have recently
cleaned a similar model after an aftermarket toner cartridge dumped
toner everywhere.  I didn't see anything unusual when I tested it.
<https://www.brother-usa.com/products/mfcl8905cdw>
>
The old MFC-9840CDW (discontinued) was not a good printer.
<https://www.google.com/search?q=MFC-9840CDW&udm=2>
Two of my customers bought them many years ago.  As I vaguely recall,
the colors did not print true, the color self-calibration didn't quite
work, and I had to clean toner from the belt with almost every
cartridge change. 

>
The color was never all that good to be sure, but it was good enough
for me.  Nor did I clean the belt all that often.

>
I'm told that it is possible to get descent color from the Brother
MFC-9840CDW.  However, it requires tearing it apart and cleaning the
toner dust off the color calibration optics and sensors. 

Ahh.  So that's why.  Wonder if Brother has improved that part of the
design.  One assumes so, after 15 years.

   To maintain
the color settings, don't let loose toner collect inside the machine,
especially around the waste box.
<https://www.amazon.com/NUCALA-Compatible-WT100CL-Replacement-DCP-9040CN/dp/B0BHSHDHMQ>
Notice that waste toner box is only good for:
 Page volume: Approximately 20,500 pages with 5% coverage.
As you approach this limit, clean out the waste toner box or you will
soon be dealing with a big mess.  (Clue:  Nobody does this until it's
too late).

Hmm.  The 9840 started to complains about that, so I dutifully
replaced the waste toner box well in time.

  I don't recall any component failures or
replacement.  The rubber parts, which are usually the first to die,
held up well, mostly because the printer was lightly used.

>
It worked well for many years, but it developed problems as it became
elderly.  In all cases, the underlying problem was that some rubber or
plastic component had aged and become glazed.  Disassembly and
cleaning with a fiberglass brush followed by ethanol wiping helped a
lot.  The famed "Stable 32" error was fixed by a carefully placed
piece of mylar tape that prevented sticking.

>
Ummmm... I think you mean "Print Unable 32" error message.  The means
you have either paper, or more likely labels, stuck on the rollers or
drum.  If it's the fuser roller or imager drum, and you get anywhere
near them with any kind of cleaner or solvent, you'll destroy the
coating.  Don't ask me how I learned this fact.  Even isopropyl
alcohol is to strong.  Instead, I use hot water, to melt the stick
label glue or scrape off the glue with a Teflon kitchen scraper.

Yes, its "Print Unable 32".  I don't print labels or the like.  Or
envelopes.  Too much trouble.

I won't say anything about resurfacing the roller using mylar tape
except that I've never tried it, don't think it will work, and have no
intention of trying it.

The piece of tape was on a location sensing pad of some kind; don't
recall where.  The rollers I was resurfacing were made of rubber of
some kind, and were not destroyed by this treatment.

Also, most of the solvents will attack rubber and cause it swell.
Resurfacing the rubber rollers with wire bushes, sandpaper, file
cards, and other mechanical methods will work if the rubber is
reasonably intact.

Ethanol is safe.

The way it works is that the rubber cracks as the plasticizer
evaporates from the rubber.  It's the plasticizer that makes the
rubber flexible.  It also provides a high friction surface.  What
alcohol and other solvents do is remove the plasticizer.  This causes
the rubber roller to swell and eventually harden.  Whenever I found a
rock hard rubber roller, it was either from old age or someone had
tried to clean the roller with alcohol. 

The rollers that needed the treatment were already glazed, probably
due to plasticizer evaporation, and the objective was to physically
remove the hardened layer and remove the sanding grit and debris using
the ethanol.  This did not re-glaze the rollers.  The exposure was
short.

I once bought a bottle of "rubber renewer" on eBay.  Nasty smelling
stuff but it did the job.  It seemed to be a mixture of xylene and
some kind of oil.  The idea was to expand the cracked rubber surface
which allowed the oil to migrate into the cracks.  Xylene evaporates
very quickly which prevents deep penetration in the rubber.  That
allows enough oil to replace any lost plasticizer and also not turn
the rubber surface into a sticky goo.  It worked fairly well, but a
new replacement rubber roller lasted longer.  If possible, I flipped
over the rubber on plastic rollers before using rubber restorer.
<https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=rubber%20restorer%20printer%20rollers>

I looked at that.  It lists C3H8O and C8H8O3 as ingredients. 

The first is also known as isopropyl alcohol.

The second is probably a plasticizer, but many chemicals answer to
that formula, maybe it's what is used in platen rubber rollers during
manufacture.

I would guess that there is no Xylene ((CH3)2C6H4), or it would have
been mentioned.

I did not find out who is making this stuff, and it may be a one-man
operation.

Joe Gwinn

But finally it all had worn out too much, and the common wear-out
parts could no longer be purchased anywhere.  And while toner was
still available, the large-capacity cartridges were not, which I took
as an omen.
>
And after 15 years, it owed me nothing, and many things were greatly
improved over those years.  The new printer is twice as fast as the
old printer, and the color is far better.  And does not misfeed when
humidity is low.
>
>

Try:
<https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/Device/Brother_Printer>
<https://www.printerforums.net/forums/brother.19/>

>
Will do, thanks
>
Joe Gwinn