HP Original Toners

Maintenance Kit

Fuser

Spares

HP RU6-0171 Fuser Drive Cog for HP P4014 Series Printers.

HP Part RU6-0171 is the brown heat-resistant plastic cog that drives the fuser in P4014, P4015 and P4515 printers. Not the one on the fuser, the one in the printer.

All models in the P4010/P4500 series take the same fuser and have the same motor and associated parts.

The fuser is part CB506-67902 (in the US CB506-67901), the side plate is RC2-2432 and the fuser motor is RM1-5051 .

Cog RU6-0171 has 33 teeth and is made of brown heat-resisting material -commonplace on fusers. There is some detailing on the front of the cog, possibly strengthening or so that it runs more true.

This cog is essentially just concerned with transmission. The reduction in speed and increase in torque is done by it's predecessors in the chain.

The connections between the fuser drive and the fuser itself was a problem in the LaserJet 4200 series where it was accomplished by something called the swing-plate assembly RM1-0043 which spring loaded a cog onto the fuser. This was one of the few sources of trouble in the LJ 4200 series printers and remained so despite HP redesigns and some parts suppliers comming up with their own solutions. The side-plate in the HP LJ P4014 series is in the same position and has the same function but a completely different design. Judging by the volume of complaint on the Internet the new design is less annoying but not trouble free. It doesn't seem that all printers with easily exchanged fusers have problems coupling them into the drive chain but on this design there still is an issue.

Printers that get noisy may well have this fault. Remove the fuser and look closely at the cog on it, the cog at the end of the side-plate that engages it (which is RU6-0171) and underneath for any ground off bits of plastic. Cogs get noisy with very small ammounts of damage. A potential problem is that with an old fuser where the cogs have worn together the printer might be relatively quiet. With a new fuser and a sharp new cog it can get rather noisy.

Preventing the fault is a matter of ensuring the fuser is fully seated and clicks home when it is changed. Once the fault develops the choice is between putting up with a noisy printer, replacing the side plate RC2-2432 or replacing just the cog. The advantage of replacing the cog is that it will tend to be cheaper, the advantage of replacing the whole side-plate is a certain amount of security - if all the cogs are changed that should break any chain of consequential damage. However where HP made swing-plate assemblies available for the LJ-4200 they haven't so far chosen to make the equivalent part available for the P4014 series. There isn't the security of a manufacturer designed or even authorized part.

To see RU6-0171 in context in the engineering diagrams click here, its the fuser drive side plate A25 and the associated cogs.

Fitting Instructions

A substantial part of the printer has to be dismantled to get at the fuser drive cog. The task is very reminiscent of changing the swing-plate in an LJ 4200. It would be wise to schedule in excess of an hour for a first job, although if repairs could be organised on a production line basis that could be got down to under 30 minutes per machine. The problem for service engineers is that you are not likely to find these faults on anything like production scale; field-service engineers will be responding to one-off events.

Manufacturer Information

Manufacturers, distributors and retailers of this kind of part tend to be rather cagey about where they come from.

Quite often they pretend to be "manufacturing for HP" but this seems peculiar because the physical engine is usually made by Canon. HP may control the logistics. There sometimes seems to be an implication that spares are being made available as surplus - part of an overrun in production perhaps. That would be very peculiar because HP or Canon will have a clause in their contract saying that overage is destoyed. It might not be difficult to circumvent such a clause but when the product appears on the market the manufacturer would clearly investigate.

Distributors pretend to be manufacturers and retailers like to pretend to be distributors. On the whole manufacturers of this kind of part don't sell in two and three off to the general public - transaction costs are far too high.

In automotive spares a few brands have succeeded in establishing an identity of their own; the parts come in boxes or on cards with the parts vendors name on it.

Compatible or clone printer part manufacturers are hidden and obscure, use plain packaging.

No alternative part numbers are known at this time.

Web Research

Querying Google with RU6-0171 in August 2013 gave About 2,820 results (0.23 seconds).

printerparts-exchange.com $8.99, printlaserusa.com $5.15, laserprinterkits.com complete fuser cog kit $26.95, feedroller.com $4.32, partsmart-corp.com $3.25, extramoreparts.com poa, amazon.com (Boracell) $1.95 + $8.49 shipping, usaprinterguy.com $9.18, pricegrabber.com $26.00, fptg.co.uk £11.40, ebay.co.uk (rsprinterparts) $5.25, ebay.co.uk (popularparts) US $6.99 £4.52, ebay.co.uk (print_laser) US $5.15 Postage:US $11.00 (approx. £7.11), alibaba.com poa, quikshiptoner.com $6.89, ebay.com (print_laser) US $5.15, alibaba.com (showroom - Shenzhen Future, Shenzhen DHL etc), http://yoursourceglobal.com $2.99, zimbio.com advertising Amazon, alibaba.com( Shenxiangyu Technology) poa, .alibaba.com (Shenzhen Shenxiangyu Technology again) poa, http://future-area.en.alibaba.com poa, aliexpress.com (store 810140) US $3.00 / lot of 5, memory4less.com poa, printer-parts.ro 34.57 Lei, lista.mercadolivre.com.br R$ 25.

Prices noted are for a new item without tax. The list is as encountered. We haven't bothered with currency conversion - half of our readers are outside the UK and are more interested in dollar prices.

laserprinterkits.com complete fuser cog kit $26.951 - GR-P4014-32T (32 tooth gear) 1 - RU6-1070 (25T/91T) 1 - RU6-0164 (18T) 1 - RU6-0165 (17T) 1 - RU6-0171 (33T) 1 - RU6-0172 (35T)

Supply Situation

At the time of writing HP don't supply these cogs. It is possible that the same part is used by Canon in one of their printers and there is a very little evidence this might be true. So far as we can tell, all supply is "compatible" "clone" or "aftermarket". Making a plastic cog is not a particularly complicated task so there may be several producers and quality of the product may vary.

Many compatible parts fall at the first hurdle of visual inspection, the molds have been cast from a part (it should be the other way round). The surface texture is wrong, faces that should be flat are slightly concave. Character markings from the original are present but not as distinct as they should be. On the other hand mold separation lines and injection points that should be clean are not. If a clone manufacturer can't get the mold right what are the chances they worked hard on the plastic formulation ?

Testing something like a cog intended for substantial loads in a hot environment is quite difficult. Dimensions, weight and volume will show how identical a part is to the original but on a part this small it might be difficult to distinguish measurement error from important variation. The real test is performance; does it do the job? That would take dozens of printers running in various patterns - so far as we know no factory producing this sort of part has that sort of testing regime. (Please tell us if you know differently).

These are important and even critical parts; the printer could be noisier than it should be if the cog is not right although there is no reason why the fusing process should not work. Problems may be more insidious; it is possible that an incorrect molding or plastic formulation will create excessive wear, that the cog will degenerate or cause problems for it's neighbours.

From a service engineer's point of view the element of doubt introduced by compatible parts is unwelcome; on the other hand if this part has failed the only choices are "refurbs" (pre-worn) or compatibles.

In July 2013 these parts are available as new compatible items and potentially as refurbished parts. We will probably be able to supply a "refurb" at this time (August 2013).

The part is not listed by any of HP's UK distributors in August 2013; it is possibly a bit under the radar.

We are researching supply of these parts at present. If you need on urgently then ask - the email address is above.

Copyright G & J Huskinson & MindMachine Associates Ltd 2013, 2015, 2016. Some pictures derived from HP User and Service guides. These technical pages do not constitute an offer for sale; just our knowledge at the time of writing. See the catalog. Sales pages on this Web site use cookies to store user information. We also use Google Analytics to track site usage patterns.