HP Color LaserJet 1600 Printer (CB373A)

The Color LaserJet 1600 was sold as an affordable entry level A4 colour laser printer, which means the hardware was relatively cheap to buy. They print engine used was Canon and HP's second attempt to produce a colour printer fitting the space and budget of small businesses and home offices. The Color LaserJet 1600 is the non-network host based version of the Color LaserJet 2600N series. The series design proved very popular and is still widely used.

Most users would plug it in using USB. The CLJ 2600N was introduced in May 2005 and the CLJ 1600 a year later - presumably reinforcing the design's success at a lower price-point.

The CLJ 1600/2600 printers are technically quite different to the previous design in their market position which had been the CLJ 1500/2500. The Color Laserjet 2500 aimed to be affordable by using a carousel of toner/developer units. The carousel mechanism cuts costs by sharing one organic photoconductor drum (OPC) amongst the four colours. These newer printers use an inline cartridge arrangement, each colour has toner, developer and it's own drum and all four work at the same time. The workings are very much like the techniques used in the bigger Color LaserJet 3600, 4600 and 5500 so these printers can work quite rapidly. Obviously HP did not make them print as quickly as the bigger and more expensive machines, they have neither the motors nor processor for it. The cartridges are smaller as well.

Small Offices / Home Offices

The printers are reasonably robust but they are recommended for low volume work - 250-1500 pages per month. HP claim a duty cycle to 20,000 pages per month but recommend printing below 2,500 pages. Given the colour cartridge life of 2,000 pages that is probably at the high end of what anyone would realistically attempt. The duty-cycle was a limit on the warranty but these printers are beyond that age so that is no longer relevant. Basically there are all sorts of little cost saving measures in cheap printers, wired in connections where there could be exchangeable components, shafts with no proper bearings, lightly made motors, lubrication for life that would need replacing if the page-count went into the hundreds of thousands. There is nothing preventing these machines being used for 8 hours per day if you can afford the cartridges. They will need stripping and rebuilding after about 100,000 pages.

The CLJ 1600 or the CLJ 2600 are appropriate for general printing that includes some colour. The limited 16 MB memory suggests these printers may struggle with complex prints like full-page photographs (although it is enough for a 600dpi colour separation at 1 bit per plane). The usual sign of a problem is that particular pages take a long time to print - several minutes wait is not unknown. Turning a jpeg or PDF image into something suitable to print is similar to putting it on the screen, but there is potentially much more information on a printed page so a huge memory demand. Being a host-driven Winprinter these might behave better or worse than the CLJ 2600.

Contemporaries and Rivals

The CLJ 1600/2600 engine also appears as the multifunction printer / copiersCM1015MFP and CM1017MFP   (both introduced in November 2006).

The CLJ 1600/2600 design was succeeded by theCLJ 2605  with a slightly improved 10 page per minute colour and 12 ppm mono performance. The CLJ 2605 has 64MB RAM so it can handle much more complicated page layouts without unduly slowing down.

The CLJ 1600 was available (July 2009) for prices in the £150-£200 range.

Current Prices on eBay for working machines can be around £100 - which is about the price of four remanufactured cartridges. Obviously the value depends on the condition of the cartridges, fuser and belt.

Comparable printers from other manufacturers include: Dell 1320CN, Samsung CLP300, 310 and CLP 315 and Brother HL 4040CN

The Printer Now

As of May 2012 HP Partsurfer has carried a note This product (CB373A) is no longer supported by HP as of May-15-2012, and service parts may not be available. That means that HP will not replenish spares stocks when they run out. It will be a matter of whether Canon go on making parts, compatible makers are willing to step in, or whether people can figure out ways to refurbish fusers, ETBs and rollers. For a printer this old it may not seem worth it. On the other hand newer printers offer quite limited advantages and will tend to have higher running costs - refilled and remanufactured cartridges for these older machines are quite cheap (As little as £25, although that is probably just a refill)

Windows user worries tend to be about 64 bit and Window 7 drivers. Basically HP aren't going to provide those, you will have to run using an XP or Vista driver in compatibility mode. This is an older printer, no longer supported. Printer manufacturers don't backdate the drivers for products that aren't current.

Linux users report issues with poor colour using the recommended foo2HP driver. (http://foo2hp.rkkda.com/). A cure for this might be to use the hplip driver. There is more on this in the section of drivers below.

You aren't going to get spectacular colour photos from laser printers like these - use an inkjet printer instead.

Old, New and Costs

HP have been running adverts throughout 2012

Twice the impact. Half the Cost HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus prints brilliant colour at up to half the cost per page of laser printers.

These ads are aimed very squarely at low cost laser printers like the CLJ 1600. HP have pulled down the price of ink for their office oriented inkjets Like the OfficeJet and indeed it does have a low price for a high capacity cartridge. The slight problem is that you don't need to pay HP's price for CLJ 1600 cartridges - refills and remanufactured versions are half the price. And of course the OfficeJet Pro 8600 does have a problem - its an inkjet.

Nevertheless it does seem likely that strong promotion of the OfficeJet and turning off parts for the Color Laserjet 2600 series will drive these printers off the market. If you want to repair yours read on.


Control:

Easy monitoring of supplies through the front panel LCD display. Since there is no network the control panel on this printer is not much more informative than the driver.

Duty Cycle:

20,000 ppm duty (Recommended 250-1500 pages). Some sources claim a duty-cycle of 35,000 pages per month but that would use rather ludicrous numbers of the 2,500 page toners. As previously mentioned, this is the lowest member of HP's inline cartridge printer series.

Up to 8ppm in Black or Colour

Resolution to 600x 600 dpi . HP ImageREt 2400, Ultraprecise toner, HP edge-enhancement technologies. The CLJ 1600 can produce respectable colour photographs.

Paper Handling:

A4. 250 sheet universal tray included. Optional extra tray, 250 sheet universal tray included, optional second tray Media Sizes: 3 by 5 to 8.5 by 14 in (76 by 127 to 216 by 356 mm)

Duplex:

Manual only via software

Processor:

264MHz processor

Memory:

16MB RAM (Not expandable)

The processor and memory are the same as provided on the CLJ 2600N.

Interface:

USB connection to a local computer.

For direct network connection the CLJ 2600N and CLJ-2605 were the best choice.

Network:

No network - the CLJ 2600N and CLJ 2605 are the network models.

System Compatability:

Microsoft Windows XP, Vista. Linux CUPS supports these printers using the foo2hp driver. Linux users report issues with poor colour using the foo2HP driver. Try HPlip - written by HP it ought to work.

These printers and their relatives the CLJ 2600 use what is called Host based printing - there is no print language such as PCL or Postscript, instead the printer is sent a rasterised page image by the computer. This is a common technique, widely used with inkjet and low cost laser printers.

Host based printing uses the computer's own processor power for the graphics job, and just sends the printer some rudimentary commands to control the motors together with the dot pattern it needs to print on the page (called a raster). The printer's own processor need only be powerful enough to control the motors and store the immediate bit pattern sent to the printheads, it doesn't have to create the page image at all. A disadvantage is that the printer does need a computer of some kind to drive it, it isn't able to print out logging information from a weighing machine or phone system for instance -but those are minor uses for printers. Most printers do work next to reasonably powerful Windows computers.

Images to be printed are sent to the HP CLJ 2600 from the nearby computer using the Zenographics ZjStream protocol. ZjStream is an efficiently compressed raster graphic protocol. Many printer manufacturers license it. Zenographics manufactured network devices and graphics software, and was acquired by semiconductor maker Marvell in 2006. Marvell is a fabless company shipping over a billion chips a year, usually specialist devices doing a demanding job based on an ARM chip with some special hardware.

Because ZjStream is essentially a graphic image any computer can send it. Linux uses the foo2HP driver. See http://foo2hp.rkkda.com/

Dimensions:

407 by 453 by 370 mm for basic unit

Weight:

18.4kg with consumable installed

Consumables:

As usual with Color Laserjets the machine takes Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black print cartridges (CMYK printing). Like most HP printers this model has the toner, developer, drum and waste receptacle built into one unit, minimising the inconvenience of changing consumables. HP SureSupply alerts are given when cartridge is low - it supports online ordering. Compatible, refill and remanufactured cartridges may not support SureSupply in which case the machine will say "Non HP Cartridge". HP provide a clear outline of how to change the cartridges in the user manual and online.

The fuser lasts around 100,000 pages, so it probably adds about 0.1p to the average page cost.

The printer also uses an electrostatic belt as part of the imaging process. This lasts through several changes of toner - possibly up to 100,000 for mono print but maybe 25,000 for colour. That suggests 0.1p to 0.4p per page.

HP don't seem to actually give an expected life for the fuser and ETB. There might be an expectation that users won't change them, since they are wired in place, however they are changeable.

Q6000A, Black Print Cartridge for CLJ 1600/ 2600/CM1015. 2500 pages at 5% - Q6000A

Q6001A, Cyan Print Cartridge for CLJ 1600/ 2600/CM1015. 2500 pages at 5% - Q6001A

Magenta Print Cartridge for CLJ 1600/ 2600/CM1015. 2500 pages at 5% - Q6003A

Q6002A, Yellow Print Cartridge for CLJ 1600/ 2600/CM1015. 2500 pages at 5% - Q6002A

Q6000AD, Black double pack- 2x2,500 cartridges - Q6000AD

HP cartridges are likely to work reliably and give accurate colour reproduction. However these printers were usually bought by cost-conscious users and there are a wide variety of refilled and remanufactured print cartridges. Non-HP cartridges can be half the price of manufacturers original devices.

Fuser:

Laser printers make the image on the page from lose toner powder. The fuser in a laser printer adheres the toner powder to the page using a combination of heat and pressure.

  • RM1-1821 Fuser Unit for HP Color Laserjet 1600/ 2600N (220/240 Volt EU/UK) - RM1-1821-240CN
  • RM1-1820 Fuser Unit for HP Color Laserjet 1600/ 2600N (110/127 Volt US/Can), - RM1-1820-240CN

As with the transfer belt the fuser in the CLJ 1600 is more than averagely difficult to change. The fuser is under the top cover and it has to be removed to change it.

  • (0) Remove the power cord - electronic parts will be exposed - Do Not Proceed if you lack experience with electronics !!
  • (1) Take off the paper delivery tray at the top
  • (2) Open the printer door
  • (3) Remove two screws from the right cover and one from the left cover
  • (4) Remove the right cover, release the tab half way down the front
  • (5) Remove the left cover
  • (6) Unplug the Control Panel cable
  • (7) Release the top cover facing by using a screwdriver to release it's tabs at the rear edge of the output tray
  • (8) Remove the four screws that secure the main top cover.
  • (9) Remove the output tray itself by releasing it's tabs.
  • (10)Unplug the harness from the fuser motor, the optical encoder, the high voltage bias wire and the thermistor wire.
  • (11) Remove the three screws that secure the fuser chassis
  • (12) The fuser itself may need to be rocked back and forth a bit to lo0sen it and should then roll forward to remove it.

To reassemble with the new fuser reverse the steps.

US site www.Partshere.com has excerpts from the HP manual as a PDF with photographs under the heading "HP Color LaserJet 1600 Service Manual"

ETB:

The print cartridges produce an image in one colour each. These images are accumulated using the Electrostatic Transfer Belt or ETB which carries the page across the series of print cartridges. The ETB is the wide grey-black belt inside the cartridge door. It starts fairly glossy, but as it ages it gets a bit scratched. When the printer is testing and calibrating itself it prints directly on the belt, later cleaning the toner off into the magenta waste toner holder. Ultimately the belt needs replacing, probably between 25,000 and 100,000 pages depending on how the printer is used.

The ETB on these low-cost printers is screwed and wired into the best of the printer, so unlike the more expensive printers changing the ETB needs a bit of engineering effort. There are some instructions here

Spares:

As usual with colour printers most faults are cleared by changing the toners, the imaging belt or the fuser. Paper feed faults and paper jams can be caused by worn rollers and pads.

RM1-1922 Separation Pad for CLJ 1600/ 2600/ 2605/ CM1015/ CM1017MFP - RM1-1922-000CN

RC1-5440 Tray 2 & 3 Pickup Roller D-shaped Roller for CLJ 1600/ 2600N/ CM1015/ CM1017MFP - RC1-5440-000CN

There is no tray 1 roller and pad because this printer only has a single sheet slot feed

RM1-1975, DC Controller for CLJ 1600/2600N was RM1-1975-050CN now - RM1-1975-090CN

RM1-1978 High Voltage PSU for the HP Color Laserjet 2600N, RM1-1978-000CN, (code not recognised by HP)

RM1-1976, DC Power Supply for the HP Color Laserjet 2600N, RM1-1976-000CN (Discontinued)

RM1-1983, Control Panel for LaserJet 1600/2600N was RM1-1983-000 now - RM1-1983-050CN

RM1-1945, Cassette tray 3 (250 sheets) for CLJ 1600/ 2600N/ CM1017MFP - RM1-1945-080CN

-1925, Cassette Tray 1 ?? (250 sheets) for CLJ 1600/ 2600N/ CM1015MFP/ CM1017MFP - RM1-1925-000CN

Also note:

  • RM1-2705-070CN, 250 Sheet Cassette - Pull out cassette not including the base assembly - RM1-2705-070CN
  • RM1-2732 500 Sheet Cassette RM1-2732-030CN - RM1-2732-030CN

We are trying to resolve exactly which trays are accessories and which merely cassettes - information from HP and distributor sources isn't conclusive. Email if you want to buy a tray or cassette.

RM1-1859, Output Tray Extender / delivery tray for CLJ 1600/ 2600N/ 2605, RM1-1859-020CN

RM1-5181 Laser Scanner Assembly for the HP Color Laserjet 1600/2600/1015 was RM1-1970-000CN now - RM1-5181 The price of this laser scanner is nearly as high as that of the printer - so it's not likely to sell.


Copyright G Huskinson & MindMachine Associates Ltd 2012