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Stacker

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

HP CB521A Stacker for HP P4014 Series Printers.

The CB521A Part is the HP LaserJet 500-sheet Stacker for use in the HP LaserJet P4014, P4015 and P4515 series Printers only. According to HP This accessory will improve workflow management and also accommodate multiple users by upgrading your printer to automatic sheet stacking. It enables less frequent monitoring of your printer with convenient job sorting in the additional output bin.

The CB521A is somewhat simpler than the CB522A stapler-stacker. The stapler-stacker takes things a stage further and can not only stack print jobs so they are kept separate but automatically put a staple through the corner. However the stacker-stapler was double the price.

The CB521A is much simpler alternative to the 5-bin mailbox CB520A which can be used as a sorter-collator, stacker or job separator.

CB521A differs from Q2442B used for the LaserJet 4250 and 4350. We have seen suggestions that they are the same but that can't be true; the printer top covers are rather different shapes. The mechanical principles and build are almost identical but differences in specific parts, firmware and communications protocol would reduce commonality of parts a bit.

HP have introduced another stacker CE404A to go with the LaserJet Enterprise 600 M601, M602 and M603 printers. This is backwards compatible; checked in July 2015 HP PartSurfer says:

Part CB521-67901 is no longer supplied. Please order the replacement, CE404-67901

Installation

The stacker is installed with power off. The metal legs of the stacker drop into the slots revealed when the accessory cover at the top rear of the printer is removed. The accessory cover (called RC2-2459) should be kept as it will be needed if the stacker-stapler is removed. Once the stacker is on top of the printer and completely seated at both sides turn the printer on. A green light should come on on the stapler (if there is no light or an amber light there is a problem). Print a configuration page and the new device should be listed as an accessory (Menu > INFORMATION > PRINT CONFIGURATION). Printer drivers need to be configured to recognise the new device with most operating systems. (We believe Apple devices may pick it up at the next print-job but that might depend on a protocol amendment introduced with the M601 series printers)

The stacker fits onto the top rear of the printer and provides one additional 500 sheet output bin. Frankly the stacker is ugly, but then it is quite intriguing and looks functional.

The stacker contains a solenoid which selects either the normal output bin or the extra stacker using a flapper inside the printer. A motor inside the stacker takes over as paper enters the stacker to lift paper the final distance.

The stacker contains a solenoid and an additional motor. We could find little evidence of it causing faults.

It isn't very likely that the stacker will go wrong, there aren't many parts to go wrong. The rubber rollers could wear out but they seem to be robust material.

Warranty: The stacker accessory was apparently supplied with a one year return to base warranty, however those will have expired unless they were extended. Refurbed units normally carry a 90 day warranty.

As usual with accessories try the machine without it fitted to eliminate possible causes one at a time. Try the diagnostics menu.

A printer equipped with a stacker will usually have one or more accessory trays such as 500 sheet input feeder CB518A.

HP Information

HP PartSurfer didn't respond to CB521A in August 2013 - it often doesn't when codes have that formation. A query on CB521-67901 gave:

500-sheet stacker assembly
Part CB521-67901 is no longer supplied. Please order the replacement, CE404-67901. As noted above, this was confirmed again in July 2015.

so it won't list what CB521-67901 did fit ... and for CE404-67901 it originally didn't have a list but just lists.the HP LaserJet Enterprise 600 M601DN and M601N, M602DN, M602N, M602X, M603DN, M603N, M603XH as compatible. On the grounds that other M601 accessories are backward compatible it seems likely this will be as well.

Icecat says this output stacker has both a short public code CB521A and three GTINs (EAN/UPC) 8835852799206, 0883585279920, 5711045210457 and shows 43931 product views

CB521A is the official name. CB521-67901 is what HP seem to call the "service part number"

Accessory CB521A seems to be for use in the HP LaserJet P4014 and P4015 series Printers only. PartSurfer may say the CE404-67901 (CE404A) is compatible and there doesn't seem to be any mechanical reason why it should not be because the printers are very similar. However we can find scant documentary evidence that new accessory CE404A is backward compatible with P4014 series printers.

Web Research

A Google Query on CB521A (in quotes) in August 2013 gave about 69,300 results (0.27 seconds) with the first in organic search being as follows:

hp.com advert only, hp.com support forum, amazon.com (Compubiz USA) $99.58, printware.co.uk £212.20, nextag.com (list)amazon.com (AMASUPPLY)$100.00, compubizusa.com $112.90, atec.ro 1.147,51 incl. TVA, printerworks.com refurb $149,idealo.de EUR 227.66, ebay.com (entercomputers) US $112.95, yahoo.com (compubizusa.com) $112.90, colorhexa.com irrelevant page, heise.de/preisvergleich list (amazon.de) irrelevant page, superwarehouse.com discontinued, focusedtechnology.com $177.81, shopping.netsuite.com (be clever group) £212.08, icecat.co.uk product info only, officespecialties.com $171.98, fastprinters.com new $223.28 refurb $125.30, dandun.besaba.com global product review, amazon.ca CDN$ 256.58, quikshiptoner.com $201.89 out of stock, techinkspro.com $181.08, shop.digitec.ch CHF 340, usaprinterguy.com Regular price: $155.00 Sale price: $160.18, ebay.ca $998.00, costcentral.com irrelevant page, smesolutions.co.uk irrelevant page, azcomputing.biz $75.00,

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.

Other than hp support forum, none of the websites seen gave any further information on the product. There are a few irrelevant pages in the list. All the rest in the list were merely vendors giving no more information than found in the HP brochure.

Criticism

HP Websites keep claiming Detailed specifications and warranty information for HP LaserJet 500-sheet Stacker(CB521A). But in point of fact we could find nothing of the kind online in 2013. For instance, we couldn't confirm PartSurfers's suggestion that that CE404A would be a replacement in 2013, it only seemed definite when we reviewed things in 2015.

We rather think a stacker might offer job offsetting, but this one didn't seem to - neither the user guide not service manual makes any mention of it (search for jog, jogger, offset). When HP and innumerable plagiarist sites reiterate Save time finding your print job with jobs sorted into neat stacks They seem to mean two neat stacks, one in the printer-top bin and one in the stacker. However on the grounds that the predecessor LJ-4350 stacker(Q2442B) only mentions a "jogger" for the stapler stacker we suspect it doesn't have one.

If you want to have anything up to 1000 sheets on top of the printer at a time (and it is just 20 minutes work for a P4515 or M603 at full tilt) then the stacker may be for you. However we can't see any mechanism to make it do offsetting so its a bit of a disappointment.

Things could be worse. The CE404A on an M602 apparently fails to even switch output from the top bin to the stacker when the bin is full making it useless for one of the things people buy it for. Presumably there is a firmware fix but we haven't found it yet.

Supply Situation

Part CB521A is not listed by any distributors. Part CE404A was listed but with only two in stock at one distributor and a price just shy of £ 200 in 2013. However in 2015 prospective buyers were in luck - two distributors had one each - one with an engineering part number at just under £100 and one with the consumer code at just under £200

There isn't huge demand for this accessory, perhaps because it's merits aren't well explained by HP or most of their vendors.

These are guidelines, our prices change with distribution lists - see the catalog.

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.