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Spares

HP P4014 Series Drum Motor RL1-1659-010CN.

RL1-1659 is the motor that drives the print cartridge drum, developer, precharge and transfer rollers in HP LaserJet P4014 series printers.

Drum Motor RM1-8358 is used in the LaserJet Enterprise 600 M601/2/3 printers. From HP service manuals it is not all that similar to the RL1-1659. The M601 is faster so HP presumably upgraded the specification.

RL1-1659 in the P4014 is a conventional brushless DC "outrunner" motor of the type seen on most copiers and laser printers, Japanese company Nidek are the manufacturer in this case. The big external rotor holds the permanent magnet(s) whilst the coils are inside. Outrunner motors have torque at low speed and this is wanted turning the cartridge mechanism, which puts up a surprising amount of resistance largely because of the scraper blade. The cartridge motor needs to accelerate to working speed almost immediately. A bit of electronics on the board senses the motor movement, controls it's speed and reports activity to the DC-controller.

Drum Motor Operation

The motor drives the cartridge via a big 193 tooth gear. reducing the fairly high speed of the motor to the relatively slow 3 or 4 turns per second of the drum. The gear massively increases the torque as well. This idea goes way back and the mechanism used is similar to that in the LaserJet 4200. The gear and cartridge hub are mounted on a gear shift. Ordinarily the gear is pushed forward on a spring so that it engages with the drive shaft of the cartridge drum. When the cartridge door is open the link lever RC2-2480 and RC2-2481 rotates a cam in the gear shift which pushes the gear and hub down against the spring so that the hub withdraws from the cartridge. This allows the user to remove the cartridge from the printer.

The P4014 series printers are a little different from their predecessors. Older machines have the motor's cog teeth cut in its steel shaft. The P4014 uses a helical nylon cog mounted on the shaft. The drum motor cog seems to vulnerable to damage.

The drum motor cog is not listed in the service manual but does seem to be available from Chinese manufacturers. Otherwise the motor is quite expensive, perhaps because there is a bit of demand for them (more below)

Drum Motor Problems

The drum motor should report a 59.40 error, however as noted here printers with old firmware may not do so.

We don't see reports of these motors going wrong very often although there is this suggestion of an issue with the cog.

Problems probably arise from badly refurbished cartridges. The CC364A or CC364X cartridges are quite easy to refill but of course the refiller is under some pressure to keep costs down - so they might not replace parts like the scraper blade. In the CC364X this component will have done something like 25,000 pages so it has been heavily used. The refiller also wants to impress the user with cartridge yield but to get 25,000 pages worth of toner into the box they might overfill - especially if they are using cheap toner. The load on the stirrer paddle will then be to great. Unfortunately the printer may work - it might be better if the cartridge did not move as the fault would then be evident either as a paper jam or there being no image on the drum with a stop test .

Another way to check whether a cartridge is turning properly is to put a line on one of the larger cogs with a pen. (or Tippex on a black cog). Set a print away and let it complete (or go to error) and take the cartridge back out. It is unlikely that the line will always be in the same place if the drum really is turning.

As well as damaging the cog the overload from toner could damage the motor. DC brushless motors of this kind sometimes manage to burn out a coil driver in which case they might seem to function but be weak. The diagnostic mode should help if the motor is suspect.

The motor has a small cog which does seem prone to damage if overloaded. The big cog is less of an issue - its a great big plastic thing. Neither are listed in the service manual as official HP parts although they are obtainable as "pulls" from working machines. The Service Manual doesn't seem to give a part number for the assembly on the P4014 series printer.

If there is a problem with the motor the easiest thing to try is a new cartridge of course (but the cartridge is more expensive than the motor).

We'd certainly check the cartridge before blaming the motor.

Printers with software versions earlier than 04.060.7 didn't report a motor error. Look at a configuration page to see the version. One answer to this is to go to hp.com and upgrade the software.

HP's Service manual gives some generic help for motors. It says:

59.XY ERROR A temporary printing error occurred. For help press ? alternates with 59.XY ERROR To continue turn off then on. and Inspect the DC controller PCA and verify that the following connectors are firmly seated ... If the error persists, from the DIAGNOSTICS menu, run the component tests for each motor to verify that they are operating. If any of the motors is not operating, replace the motor.

Try turning it off then on again!

HP Partsurfer says:

HWP-RL1-1659-000CN Motor DC24V Drum drive
RL1-1659-000CN Drum drive DC motor (M102) - Drives the photosensitive drum, primary charging roller, and transfer roller
RL1-1659-010CN Drum DC motor (M102) 24V - Drives the transfer charging roller, photosensitive drum, and developing cylinder

RL1-1659-010CN - Drum DC motor (M102) 24V - Drives the transfer charging roller, photosensitive drum, and developing cylinder. Part RL1-1659-000CN is no longer supplied. Please order the replacement, RL1-1659-010CN

Partsurfer also says the RL1-1659-010CN is used in the HP LaserJet Enterprise M4555 MFP Printer so perhaps the part was modified for that.

As usual with HP parts there is a potential choice of part numbers. We prefer RL1-1659 because its short. Assuming it is also used as a Canon part they will call it RL1-1659-000 and HP call the original RL1-1659-000CN. As suggested there is an updated variant RL1-1659-010CN however you will. The numbering implies that HP get supplies via Canon even though it is labelled Nidek. Icecat gives an EAN for the RL1-1659-010CN of 5704327972679.

These motors fit the P4014, P4015 and P4515 printers.As mentioned the LaserJet Enterprise 600 M601/2/3 takes a different motor - its a bit faster so presumably the motor power gets increased bit.

Supply Situation

A lot of people are offering these motors online (Google suggested 251,000 results in July 2013, although almost all were little better than one line catalog entries) We were only able to find a few references to replacing this motor actually fixing faults.

http://www.fortwayneprinterrepair.com FortWaynePrinterRepair had a useful article - but I couldn't find the specific page amongst the mountains of me-too resellers.

In July 2013 several UK distributors listed the motor at about £50 and had stock on hand. The distributor that also sells refurbished parts had no stock - suggesting a steady sale because they did have other motors for these printers. Prices for a refurb motor would be about £40 (These are guidelines, our prices change with distribution lists).

There seems to be some demand for these motors, but adequate supply at present. We would expect to be able to meet a spares requirement next-day.

Copyright G & J Huskinson & MindMachine Associates Ltd 2013, 2015, 2016. 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 catalog. Sales pages on this Web site use cookies to store user information. We also use Google Analytics to track site usage patterns.