HP Original Cartridges

5Bin Mailbox

Reliable Remanufactured Cartridges

One of the merits of the P4014 against a new printer is the low cost of good re-manufactured cartridges.

HP CB520A for HP P4014 and M601 Series Printers.

HP Part CB520A is the HP Laserjet 500-sheet 5-bin Mailbox. The 5-bin Mailbox allows people to find their printed output more quickly and easily on a busy printer. Each mailbox bin has a capacity of 100-sheets- and this can be assigned to an individual, workgroup or department for easy job retrieval. This device is easy to set up and use and can also be used as a sorter/collator, stacker or job separator.

Some sources (like HP Partsurfer- see below) suggest the mailbox will only work with the P4015 and P4515. However HP cite CB520A as an accessory for the P4014 and show it in use in the brochures (picture left).

Installation is done with the printer off. The mailbox requires the accessory cover to be removed at the top rear of the printer, it is held by clips. The metal legs of the mailbox slide into slots exposed when the accessory cover has been removed. The mailbox unit should sit neatly and evenly on top of the printer and connect electrically at the top. Turn the printer on and print a configuration page (INFORMATION, CONFIGURATION) and check the new accessory is listed as an option. Printer drivers on user computers need to be configured for the new features.

The mailboxes simply give 5 "dockets" or bins for jobs to arrrive in, they are purely a time-saving measure. They don't provide the lockable capability found on some devices, but secure print is achieved by the better method of having users give a PIN number to the printer to show they own a job before it prints.

The mailbox has a motor driving a series of rollers through belts. Solenoid driven flappers select which bin pages will arrive in.

Apparently the Universal driver in Windows 7 does not work correctly with CB520A where the XP driver did and the Vista PCL6 driver usually did. There is sometimes an issue where new drivers do not support older peripherals. There is a little about the issue on an HP forum here.

Warranty: Warranty on this part was one year return to base. We doubt any are now covered under original warranty.

The mailbox is a fairly complex set of rollers but they are the kind of materials that last rather than the soft materials used for pickup and feed in the trays. With accessory devices the first stage in diagnosing a fault is to try it with the accessory removed and see if there is any sign of the fault continuing.

The odd paper jam will happen. There is a lift-up flap on the back of the mailbox for clearing out jammed sheets. It may also be necessary to drop down the rear flap of the printer to get at sheets lower down.

HP Information

Querying HP Partsurfer on CB520A and wildcard CB520 gave nothing but a guess at CB520-67901 gave:

CB520-67901 5-bin mailbox - Provides five output bins that you can use to sort jobs

... and a compatability list of P4015TN, P4015X, P4515TN. As already suggested, this would be odd as HP brochures show the P4014 with it installed.

Icecat says this part has both a short public code CB520A and two GTINs (EAN/UPC): 8835852799138, 0883585279913. There had been 44986 product views in August 2013 suggesting moderate interest.

The 5-bin mailbox seems to be known as CB520A and as CB520-67901. We have also seen it rather wierdly listed as RM1-6224 - but that is just the printed circuit inside it.

The part CB520A is for the HP Laserjet P4014, P4015 P4515 series Printers only. The LaserJet Enterprise M601, M602 and M603 takeCE997A.

Web Research

A Google Query on CB520A (in quotes") in August 2013 gave about 518,000 results (0.25 seconds) with the first in organic search being as follows:

hp.com blog, hpjetdirect.co.uk £395.00 out of stock, fastprinters.com new $497.20 call refurb $335.30 call, printerworks.com new $429.00 refurb $189.00, costcentral.com irrelevant page, (list) myshopping.com.au AU$355.05, superwarehouse.com discontinued, atec.ro 2.190,70RN inc TVA, printware.co.uk £398.00, amazon.ca CDN$ 658.75, officespecialties.com $445.47,colorhexa.com irrelevant page, priceme.co.nz no information, entercomputers.com $510.00, compubizusa.com $530.00,priceme.co.nz no information,completedatasource.com $455.05, idealo.de refurb EUR 308,38,new 433,20 €, pricecheck.co.za R2,569.56, dhgate.com US $430.12,shop.digitec.ch no pricing, detail.zol.com.cn no pricing, shopmania.com.au $562 no basket, community.spiceworks.com no information, totaleware.com $364.98, quikshiptoner.com $514.89

Prices noted are for a new item, one off, 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.

None of the websites examined gave any further information on the product - but perhaps fitting and maintenance instructions are fairly obvious. hp com blog looks like the only site in the list seen with any possible help on the product. All the rest were merely vendors giving no more infomation than found in the HP brochure.

Supply Situation

It is usually better to buy accessories like the 5-bin mailbox as part of an HP "bundle" like the LaserJet P4515XM Printer (CB517A)

The part is no longer listed by any distributors. We think demand for this accessory was quite low and supply of the specific part has now dried up.

We can look into providing this part when required. These devices are sometimes available as a refurbished part on trade lists. A price would have to be determined at the time of the enquiry.

These are guidelines, our prices change with distribution lists - see the catalog. The distributors do not regularly list this part which indicates low demand for the 5bin-mailbox. However HP have gone on making them for subsequent models, so clearly there is a market.

Copyright G & J Huskinson & MindMachine Associates Ltd 2013, 2015. 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 catalogue. Sales pages on this Web site use cookies to store user information. We also use Google Analytics to track site usage patterns.