Printer Faults - Faded One Side of a Print

Fading at a margin generally suggests:

• an imbalance of the toner, all of it is unshiftably at one side of a cartridge. The toner agitators or stirrers should move the problem but don't invariably succeed. Try light horizontal shaking.
• bad seating of the cartridge. Alignments to under 1/100th of a millimetre are often needed. Reseat the cartridge.
• marginal voltages draining away across the length of a roller or corona due to contamination.

Margins may hold a specific meaning depending on the design of the printer. High voltages typically enter a cartridge from the left as a user faces the machine because the control panel is on the right. It generally makes sense to distribute high voltages up the side of the printer that hasn't got the low voltage control electronics in it. High voltages are generally injected into the printer from the left as we look at a printed page.

Faded One Side.

As with any fading to light the print cartridge may be towards the end of its life. Almost inevitably one side will fade before another.

Try shaking it horizontally a bit so as to even any remaining toner out. (Some cartridge manufacturers say their cartridges don't need shaking - but that sometimes turns out to be slightly untrue. Don't shake the toner too vigorously as this isn't necessary and will result in a mess.)

Cartridge mis-seating so that one side or other is not sufficiently near the transfer roller (or the developer is not near the drum in a 2-cartridge system).

The transfer roller is worn or contaminated. The transfer roller is a black roller immediately next to the photoconductive drum. Transfer rollers are normally dark grey or black and made of a conductive foam rubber. Over time they become contaminated with paper dust turning them a light grey.

Dirty contacts are a possibility. If the contact can't pass enough current for a voltage to be sustained along the length of a roller, then one side (possibly the right) will be likely to fade.