Spare parts for HP 3005 Printer

[maniac]

I've got an HP 3005n which needs a new formatter board - it's sticks on startup with a memory error, but the main memory is part of the board. It's only 18 months old, but far enough out of warranty for HP to tell me to go away (which is fair enough) and want to charge me lots to fix it (They don't supply the parts to end users )

 

So can anyone help me get hold of a formatter board for this printer to I can put it back in use - it'll be a shame to have to scrap it for the sake of a circuit board - the rest of the printer is absolutely fine. Part number is Q7848-60002

 

I have googled, which brought up a handful of sellers selling second hand parts, but none of the UK ones I rang actually had it in stock.

 

Cheers

 

Mike.

[ranj]

We have about 4 of these printers in our school and I have to say I have been disappointed with these. We have had the problem you mentioned but it was in warranty, and a 'top bin is full' message on a few others.

 

I get the sense this printer is not really designed for an educational environment and have been disappointed with HP.

 

I have decided to give Kyocera a try. See how they handle in our environment.

 

Advice to schools who have this printer,If you haven't already and within 12 months of purchase 'BUY THE EXTENDED WARRANTY' you'll thank me for it!

 

I have a supplier who can always help in these situations,not let me down, I would suggest you give him a try. PM me for his details, not sure if I am allowed to advertise on here.

[flyinghaggis]

2 of our 6 P3005N's have failed inside a year with this fault. All our P2055DN's ramdonly drop of the network requiring a restart every day to get them working again. See thread below :-

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/36047-hp-laserjet-p2055dns-going-offline-not-responding-5.html

 

The P2015's before that used to randomly loose their IP address settings!

 

I'm literally at the point where I'm contemplating never buying another HP printer again because their quality control department appears to have gone completely out to lunch!

 

HP Printers these days appear to be absolute junk

 

Anyone recommend any alternatives?

[Big_Dave]

We've had a few formatter boards go in our P series printers, it is a problem across the range. Shame really because otherwise (IMO) they are cracking printers.

 

A few sources on the 'net reckon this is due to the lead free solder that is used nowadays. People have reported good results from popping the formatter board in a hot oven for around 8 minutes

 

I'm going to try it on one a bad 3005 formatter board we have when I get some spare time.

 

I found the formatter boards are often close to the price of a new printer so I keep my eyes open on eBay and such for spares. I think the last fully working 3005 printer I got was around £90 and came with a genuine 51X toner!

 

If you create a DHCP reservation and pointer for the 2015s you will avoid the problem of lost config(s).

 

HTH

Edited March 16, 2010 by Big_Dave

[Haptic]

I would suggest taking a look at the Brother range of printers, we have sold many into the public sector and can say that i havent had anything but good feedback for not only reliability but also consumable costs,

there are a few great Brother deals on at the min including cash back and 3 year warranties so if you fancy some more info be sure to pm and i'll do what i can to help,

[maniac]

Seems like this is a common problem then. I'm definitely not buying HP any more, after this and a series of other problems I just have little to no confidence in them. I've started looking at Xerox printers, as we have one of these in our staffroom and it's the most reliable printer we have, and well built as well.

 

Mike.

[maniac]

Just started googling for this problem, and this thread on another forum HP P3005 Formatter card problems. - fixyourownprinter.com is very interesting reading for anyone with these sorts of problems.

 

Mike.

Edited March 17, 2010 by maniac

[flyinghaggis]

If you create a DHCP reservation and pointer for the 2015s you will avoid the problem of lost config(s).

 

HTH

 

We've already done it but cheers for the advice! That's frustrating but at least it's fixable. The dead formatter boards and P2055 NICs dying completely are much more serious issues as at the moment since there's no work around for the former and a dead formatter board means basically buying a new printer.

 

All the more frustrating that, from reading this message board and others, they're widespread faults which HP wont acknowledge and are unable to fix

 

Not sure about Brother as we've bought their printers previously but moved away from them as we weren't keen on the separate toner/drum setup. In my experience it wastes a lot of time troubleshooting as you never know whether or not it's the toner/drum that's faulty and often staff throw away a perfectly good toner cart before the drum is replaced negating any cost saving from having separate drums/toner. Their drivers have proved to be a bit hit and miss when it comes to correctly rendering some types of print jobs sent to them too.

We also had one specific model from them where the laser appeared to fail on every type of one model Brother HL-5170 or HL-5070 IIRC we purchased causing the print to become too faint and rendering the printers unusable after a couple of years (outside warranty). That was actually what prompted us to switch to HP!

 

Maybe the solution, as others have suggested, is just to make a point of buying printers with extended warranties as without it you just seem to end up getting grief from management when they all start dying after a couple of years.

 

Is it really asking too much to just have a printer brand that simply works without having models that all fail due to the same design fault 2-3 years down the line?

[Toby77]

I've got an HP 3005n which needs a new formatter board - it's sticks on startup with a memory error, but the main memory is part of the board. It's only 18 months old, but far enough out of warranty for HP to tell me to go away (which is fair enough) and want to charge me lots to fix it (They don't supply the parts to end users )

 

So can anyone help me get hold of a formatter board for this printer to I can put it back in use - it'll be a shame to have to scrap it for the sake of a circuit board - the rest of the printer is absolutely fine. Part number is Q7848-60002

 

I have googled, which brought up a handful of sellers selling second hand parts, but none of the UK ones I rang actually had it in stock.

 

Cheers

 

Mike.

 

I have been able to source a spare formatter board with stock if that would be of any help for you?

 

Cheers

 

Toby

[10101010]

I had 4 out of 10 fail with the same fault - I would push hp for a part replacement even it's out of warranty - I think it's a known fault to them.

[flyinghaggis]

I had 4 out of 10 fail with the same fault - I would push hp for a part replacement even it's out of warranty - I think it's a known fault to them.

 

I'd tend to agree but I've been finding the problem with HP support is you just end up getting put through to someone reading from a flowchart who's only resolution is to send a replacement printer with the same fault (in terms of our problems with P2055s). So far we've had no success speaking to anyone who can suggest anything more technical than simply holding the buttons on the printer to perform a factory reset.

Unlike Dell/etc we don't have any kind of account manager who can take up the issue on our behalf. The compaines who we usually buy HP kit, and our account manager there, dont seem interested in dealing with the problem. At the end of the day it'll be their loss as we simply wont buy anymore HP kit in future.

 

Are there any formal steps you can go through, or that anyone has had success with, in approaching HP to formally complain about hardware issues?

Edited March 19, 2010 by flyinghaggis

[flyinghaggis]

Another (2 year old and out of warranty) HP P3005N Printer in our organisation is having what appear to be similar formatter board / memory issues to the above. Freezes and wont respond to anything either over the network or by pressing the buttons on the printer . Often takes 2-3 reboots to get it going and this is happening several times a day.

 

That's nearly approaching a 50% failure rate in our school on this model of printer in only 2 years

[PeteHopton]

We use Xerox Solid Ink printers on a 'pay per page' agreement. I'm really impressed, they print in wax, so they are greener than plastic toner printers.

 

We pay less than 1p per mono page and 6p per colour page, regardless of coverage and this includes an indefinate service agreement, all consumables and warranty.

 

The printers only cost us £350+VAT and do duplex colour at about 20ppm on a sprint (well half that in duplex). The only problem is the warm up time, they dump wax out the waste tray when you turn them on/off - but this doesn't matter if you've got an ultimited consumable page click agreement.

 

(note I don't sell them)

Edited April 9, 2010 by PeteHopton
making sure I don't get banned.

[networkingNut]

We have three of of the 3005n's and they have all had the same formatter problem. I second the Extended warranty.

[flyinghaggis]

Just phoned and HP have agreed to replace our faulty (2 year old and out of warranty) P3005 with a refurb unit. Apparantly there's a notice on their helpdesk to replace any printers with this particular fault even if they're out of warranty? Don't know how long this situation will last or if it covers every single P3005 but at least it looks like some may be replaced if they have the formatter board fault and are out of warranty?

[networkingNut]

Personally I would not get another one but my Line manager thinks differently. He thinks they are the most reliable printers in the school yet in my opinion we have had more trouble with them (Everyone a new formatter board was required) than any other printer. He says "we have the extended warranty".

[RinSewand]

I know this is ressurecting an old post - but the thread linked earlier provided us with our fix, so I thought I'd post up some advice...

 

We had the memory issue, printer constantly freezing etc. Take the formatter out, and desolder all the capacitors (mark them up so you know which way round they go back on and what goes where, desolder the battery at this point too. Stick it in an electric (gas is too uneven) oven at 180C for 8 minutes, making sure it's chip side up, and that it's supported at the corners off the base of the oven (tin foil balls work well for this). Take it out to cool, resolder componants, and test. From the long thread I reckon there's an 85% success rate at least, provided the Caps are removed, ours worked perfectly afterwards.

 

Hope that helps anyone with the same problem,

 

RwD

[gill]

We've had 4 out of 6 P3005n printers fail, some just two or three months out of warranty. We gave up trying to fix them and have consigned them to a skip. We have 70 printers here and I won't be buying HP ever again. The formatter board problem seems to be a known issue but HP is not interested. HP's latest printers seem to be rubbish, spread the word so that others don't waste their budgets on them.

 

We're now trying Brother printers, fingers crossed!

[flyinghaggis]

Everytime we've phoned HP with a faulty out-of-warranty P3005 they're replaced it quibble free so far?

 

I agree though the quality of HP printers does seem to have taken a slide recently. That's about 50% of our P3005s failed within 2 years due to formatter board issues and our P2055s keep dropping off the network requiring a power reset to get them working again. We've sent HP a wireshark trace to see if that turns up anything but so far haven't heard back.....

 

We actually used to buy Brothers but found that their drivers were a bit less reliable and had a tendancy to render jobs incorrectly. That and I'm not convinced by the seperate drum/toner cartridge as it seems to make the print quality worse and resulted in a lot of staff throwing out good toner carts because the drum has gone (thereby negating the cost savings of a seperate drum).

Edited June 9, 2010 by flyinghaggis