Printer Maintenance & Consumeables

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Consumables

Printers put ink on paper, so they will stop if not given new supplies.

Thermal direct printers consume nothing but specially coated paper. The head will wear out but they last such a long time they often aren't even available as spares (rather annoyingly).

Most other printers need a supply of ink, toner, or whatever they call the colourant. There can be other consumables. Inkjets have pads for surplus ink and thermal heads need replacing from time to time. Laser printers use up toner drums, developer, and fuser oil and the fuser itself eventually needs replacing. Strip all the consumables out of a laser printer and there isn't much left beyond support structures, a gear chain and electronics.

Most manufacturers wrap the more commonly used parts up in a user changeable cartridge. So far as possible cartridges just slide or clip into place. Turning components into cartridges allows users to do a lot of basic maintenance quite easily. There is a considerable cost penalty for this because the cartridges are almost always proprietary and only available from the manufacturer.

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Maintenance & Repair

Printers are mechanical and like anything else with moving parts they can break down and need repair.

A car needs maintenance as well as fuel. The coolant in the radiator needs checking. Oil and filters need changing or metal particles build up. Tyres need inflating and sometimes replacing. The engine intermittently might need to be retuned to keep performance acceptable. All the moving components in a car engine are steadily wearing away so eventually the exhaust, windscreen wipers and then the alternator, gearbox and even the engine will need replacing. 

Domestic refrigerators last a long time but commercial refrigerators have complicated pipework that loses its coolant and needs topping up from time to time. Heating ststems are the same, the water used for circulation is gradually depleted. Maintenance is such a common feature of engineering that people presume it is needed for computers and printers.

Computer hardware doesn't really need "sserice" any more. Hardware can actually stay more or less the same from the day of purchase to the day it is scrapped. In principle nothing much inside a computer needs to move, and no circuit is stressed -so there is nothing to wear out and no "maintenance" is ever needed. Most actual machines do have a couple of problems: fans, disks and PSUs - so there is an irregular need for hardware attention. The service life of computers can often be extended a bit, for instance by upgrading memory DIMMs.

Sotware can need maintenance. The really changeable bit of most computers is the software. Software installations do tend to decay over time - for instance when more than half a dozen applications are installed on a Microsoft Windows system there tend to be DLL conflicts. Recently things have become worse because  users continually compromise their software by downloading things from the Internet. The main victims are users of older versions of Microsoft Windows which had all sorts of vulnerabilities, both Windows 9x and NT originated rather before the Internet became common. "XP" is closely related to NT and uses the same Internet Explorer so it has vulnerabilities too. Vista was supposed to fix the problems and did not.

Software maintenance can have several approaches. There are literally thousands of possible settings and components that can be changed, so trying to find out why something is not working as expected  A common approach in education and public access is just to lock the system down so that nothing the user can do can have an impact on anything except their own session - which often means removing a few freedoms they might expect.  Another approach is to keep the user files on a seperate fileserver and then periodically re-install everything. 

Printers

Printers are  a combination of

a mechanical system which actually performs the printing action. Regardless of actual design there are usually usually a couple of motors and various actuators and sensors.

a computer system which controls mechanics and turns the common codes and language expressions issued by the users computer into the dot-patterns printed and actions such as page-feed. Until quite recently the processors in laser printers were often more powerful than those in typical user computers.

a driver which is typically software on the user computer which takes data from the operating system and user program, turns it into a print language and sends it over the communication interface to the printer's internal computer.

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The mechanical part of a printer is usually split into several sections these days. Manufacturers make maintenance easier to deal with by putting the most vulnerable parts in user-changeable cartridges. For the rest of the printer wear patterns are quite predictable. 

Manufacturers and dealers see selling a printer as a license to sell the consumables.

Printers transfer some sort of ink onto paper, so obviously the ink will be used up.  People tend to be very focussed on the purchase cost of printers and rather uninterested in the price per page - until they have to buy cartridges.

The old saying "you get what you pay for" has some merit when dealing with printers. If your office will be printing material regularly then the lower consumable price, extra options like duplexing an convenience of a network connection will be worth paying for.

Unfortunately price per page is fairly difficult to discover. Manufacturers tend to be very dismissive and suggest that its impossible to compare because there are so many other issues - print speed, print quality and so forth. Actually they have a very good idea of their own and their competitors prices - Epson uses piezoelectric inkjet technology completely different to the thermal mechanisms from HP and Canon, but taking into account the capacity of the ink tanks the page price is quite similar. The big makers maintain reverse engineering projects, do their research and draw conclusions.

As a generalisation little low cost inkjets never give low running costs. The printers may not be given away to sell ink but it won't be a surprise if a manufacturer actually does this.

Higher priced commercial inkjets and lasers are more difficult to evaluate - quite deliberately so - manufacturers trade on the customers innability to get an accurate per-page price. If it were perfectly simple to evaluate printing costs several big sales outfits would be out of business!

Reviews of ink costs are fairly common in computer magazines and newspaper articles.

Here are some general points:

Consumables often give a page-count but then say "at 5% cover". Printing ordinary correspondence on white paper might give the manufacturers price per page. Printing photographs might easily cost 20 times as much - but still be cheaper than high-street photo developing.

Colour printers always cost more than mono print - there are four sets of mechanisms. Colour printers can be expensive to run even if you don't use colour much because just setting the printer in motion activates the cleaning cycle. Printing a photo which usually has solid page cover can use more than 20 times the ink (or toner) needed for text. The reason solid print can actually be more than 20 times as ink-hungry is because darker colours are often achieved by overprinting with two inks. If you don't really need colour buy a mono printer. If you just sometimes need colour it has been sensible to buy a mono laser and a colour inkjet. Many recent colour laser printers genuinely do disengage the colour mechanism when it isn't in use so users really should only pay for colour when they need it. On some printers the user actually takes the colour cartridges out.

The big brands have price competition on consumable - HP, Lexmark, Canon and Epson - maybe Lexmark. The other brands - Brother, Dell, Kyocera, Oki, Panasonic, Konica Minolta, Samsung, Tally etc etc - just don't sell enough printers for there to be much price competition on consumables. Of course if you happen to know that a big-name cartridge is compatible that's fine.

Printer consumable prices are not fixed - in fact it's easy to find a 25% price spread. The best value is usually either:

  • a supermarket - but they only carry the major brands most popular cartridges
  • or a bulk buy on the web - buying one off causes high courier charges.
High street computer and special ink shops have lots of overheads and people only have so much time to spend shopping around so they don't really have to give a good deal.
 

Consumables are used up in the operation of the printer.

Inkjet printers consume ink, printheads and often need special paper - particularly for photographs.

Very low cost inkjet printers are a "honey trap" to sell high priced ink. Really low cost printers have a combination or "tricolour" colour cartridge so when one colour fails the rest just get thrown away. Inkjet cartridges may last as little as 300 pages. Many designs build the ink-tank and printhead into one cartridge so perfectly good heads get thrown away. Advantages of this are the simplicity of having one item to change, and the knowledge that a new printhead is always in place. The disadvantage is that a thermal printhead could last up to ten times as long as the the average ink cartridge.

There can be reasons to buy these printers. If you are a student with a small fixed income but only need a printer for a year or so the long term operating cost may be no problem. You'll buy a couple of cartridges then maybe bin the printer (Environmentally unsound, it should be recycled). As well as the price of cartridges remember that pictures will need special paper - and it can be 50p per sheet - 100 times the cost or ordinary paper.

Businesses with a serious print requirement are likely to find little inkjet printers bad value. Not only are ink and paper expensive - there are too many recurring costs. Bigger businesses avoid little inkjet printers because they cause too many user calls from users to tech support.
 

Laser printers typically consume toner, developer, OPC drum, waste-toner bottles, fuser heated roller surface and fuser oil - as well as paper. Again, all but the fuser parts are typically integrated into a single user-changeable cartridge. In principle the OPC could generally last twice as long as the toner, and the developer could last 6 times as long. The cartridge design does waste these parts, but it does simplify matters for users.

Laser cartridge lives normally range from 2,000 to 15,000 pages. The cartridge normally comes with fairly detailed instructions, and may have coloured plastic handles and alignment arrows to help the installation process. People still do get things wrong - so even this aspect of printer use does impose a burden on the IT department.

Fusers are often an "engineer changeable" item - see below. Actually for some low-cost printers the fuser isn't strictly changeable at all - they aren't available and if they fail out of warranty the manufacturer expects to sell a new printer.

Consumable Costs

Consumables are more nuisance than the ordinary stock of a stationery cupboard. Inkjet cartridges commonly cost £10 - £20 each, and Laser cartridges £50 or more. If there are several kinds of printer in one business then there can easily be £1000 worth of stock sitting in a cupboard. Buying consumables can also be a trap for the unwary. A new branded laser cartridge might be £45 from one supplier and £80 form another. There may be another company selling "compatibles" for £35 - these could be 100% identical to manufacturers originals (and made in the same factory). There are also well - refurbished cartridges that will prove perfect. Just sometimes a badly made or refurbed cartridge has a reliability problem and makes a mess of a printer.

Engineer changeable consumables generally last a long time and changing them may involve some intimate knowledge of the machine.

By far the bulk of the consumable parts are "user changeable", however there are parts like fusers that are normally engineer changeable. Printer pickup rollers and some mechanical assemblies also wear out and can sometimes be considered "engineer changeable consumables".

Inkjet printers intended for frequent commercial use often have a fixed printhead. Cartridges are cheaper because a printhead doesn't have to be shipped as part of each one. On the other hand changing the printhead can be difficult - and is often messy.

Less obviously inkjets often have a waste ink pad or bucket that is often intended to last the "life" of the printer. If the printer is set on cleaning cycle very regularly then the pads fill and the printer can start to leak. Changing the waste mechanism often involves stripping the printer down.

Laser printer fusers and ozone filters are often engineer changeable. In fact an engineer can often save customers money by identifying the failed part of a fuser and returning it to service.

Engineer changeable "consumables" often irritate customers, who think they should be made user changeable. This is possibly true, but the chances are that when a printer has produced 150,000 pages and needs a new fuser it also needs the paper paths cleaning, ozone filter and  pickup rollers replacing and a thorough clean of the corona wires and charge transfer rollers. Printers generally don't need a regular "service" in the way a car does, but they need attention from time to time to maintain the print quality.
 

Printer Maintenance:

Mechanical assemblies may not be counted as "Consumable", but they wear out. Low cost printers may only be rated for a 50,000 page life  (much shorter than a fuser) - but since they are intended for home use they are unlikely to ever wear out.

More substantial printers are typically rated for a life between 300,000 and a million pages. Nothing dramatic happens as the printer gets older, but
 

  • lifetime lubrication will contain too many metal filings and wear will accelerate
  • rubber on pickup rollers degrades with age and paper dust
  • the composition of grease in clutches and bearings will age and stiffen leading to timing faults
  • contamination will build up inside optical mechansims such as the scanner assembly
  • high voltage distribution buses will become so dirty that they malfunction.
  •      

    Results over time tend to be more misfeeds - particularly on duplex print. Print quality suffers - text isn't so sharp and pages may have a background patina. Dirt and dust in the printer lead to streaks on pages.

    Some printers do benefit from a careful internal cleaning from time to time, some might need a bit of light oil in appropriate places. Printers don't really need a "service" like a car but they do need cleaning, often in places that users can't reach.

    Paper jams and their results are the most common problem with printers. Paper quality is critical, particularly in cut-sheet handling. If the paper is too damp sheets stick together and bend badly as they are heated in the fuser. If paper is too dry its static charge can spoil the image in laser printers - particularly on duplex print. If paper has been unevenly heated it may curl oddly as it passes through a laser. Mechanical guillotining with a saw makes dust, which accumulates in the printer.

    Causes of paper jams are typically that a printer manages to feed five sheets at once and they jam in the fuser. Or someone sticks a page of labels through and one comes off. Impatience with one jammed sheet tears a corner off and it lurks in the mechanism waiting to snag future sheets.

    Typical failures from old age are the scanner motor or the pickup roller clutches.

    Basic structural parts - the case, most of the plastic assemblies and the electronics of the printer are unlikely to wear out. Electronic components do fail - but the problems are usually interface chips damaged by static, lightning or mistreatment, motor driver chips overloaded by bearing failure, or random chance and bad design.
     

    All these things can be fixed - if parts are available. There are several sources of parts:

    brandname maker - the company whose name is actually on the printer -often expensive and usually with spares policies designed to make repair difficult.

    engine manufacturer - the company that made the bulk of the machine

    parts makers - fuser rollers and lamps, kicker rollers, motors and chips are often industry standard parts.

    secondhand units - some faults like scanner or motor failure are rare so old parts work well
     

    If a printer is designed to be reasonably reapirable and spares are obtainable at reasonable prices  then there is no reason in principle why it shouldn't be kept going forever. In practice there usually comes a point where making the printer good as new would mean completely stripping and rebuilding it - which might cost nearly as much as an equivalent replacement. In most practical situations the job the printer did will have been redefined inside ten years, so it will then be obsolete. The ultimate fate of a printer is to go beyond economic repair.
     
     

    Recycling - Printers tend to have about the same economic lifetime as the computers they serve - perhaps because a lot of people take a "forklift" approach and simply renew everything. In principle printers might last longer because their jobs don't need to change so much - an A4 laser printer installed in 1995 can still work fine today.

    Computers have few moving parts but they have tend to have a life of about 5 years. During that time the "Moore's Law" progress in design means that a new machine would have something like 30 times more memory and processor power and trying to upgrade the older machine becomes a thankless task. What a printer does might not shift so dramatically - the job tends to remain text on paper - but parts wear out and manufacturers change design. In recent times there have been big shifts in what users want with photorealistic colour images rising up the agenda. Colour processes weren't practical until quite recently and conflict with the other demand for low cost printing. Nevertheless solid old printers are being replaced by inkjets with a life of a couple of years.

    Like most things in computing the first wave of things to be sold second-hand still have a value. Where the value of cars, caravans or boats is set by the price they sold at the value of a second hand printer tends to be set by the price of an equivalent thing today - which may be markedly lower and carry a long warranty. Since quite a lot of printers are covered by maintenance contracts the price can vary - if you need a polygon mirror assembly for contract work the chances are that a spare will cost nearly as much as a new printer, so a second hand printer might represent good value. As fashions change and spares become commonplace the value of old printers declines until they may be worth less than nothing - the metal, plastics and electronics will need separating out. Recent printers are little more than a mixed bag of plastics.

    In principle the motors in a printer might have uses. In practice they tend to be rather specialised sorts of stepper or electronic drive motor with no documentation on how they work, so its difficult to find a use for them. Its a pity that printer manufacturers can't stick to standard motors that might be of use to schools and hobbyists and that they are so secretive about circuit diagrams.
      

    Editing remarks 

    There are one or two reasonable ideas in here so I'm leaving it on the site for now. However It's far to unstructured, discursive and full of unsubstantiated waffle so it needs review.

     © Graham Huskinson 2010