Nightmare with the Art Department Printer

[Wirral_Wonderer]

Dear All,

 

The story so far...

 

We used to have an Epson B500 in the art dept, which was working great, however one day it stopped working. The finance dept has done a deal with a local OEM toner firm which supplies us with reconditioned laser printers FOC.

 

We replaced the B500 with a recon HP LJ4650 which is great at most things but eats full page colour prints. We have tried changing paper, different brands of toner even puka HP, keeping the paper in another room in case it is becoming damp, new fuser units.

 

Understandably the art department want to throttle me.

 

Before they do, what do other schools use, any thought on continuous feed ink jet systems?

 

Many thanks

[TomCox]

Oh we used to have those B500, such a pain they were - the network cards seemed to fry for some strange reason, we got through about 5 of them.

 

We use HP 2600,3600 laserjets for Art and Photography who need A3 use a Sharp MX that's on rental. If they want better quality they are kindly pointed towards Jessops...

[CESIL]

I have had this problem with an HP4650.

 

I found the solution was to increase the top margin via the web control panel...

 

If I can find the time when I am at school tomorrow I will post more details...

[plexer]

Dear All,

 

The story so far...

 

We used to have an Epson B500 in the art dept, which was working great, however one day it stopped working. The finance dept has done a deal with a local OEM toner firm which supplies us with reconditioned laser printers FOC.

 

We replaced the B500 with a recon HP LJ4650 which is great at most things but eats full page colour prints. We have tried changing paper, different brands of toner even puka HP, keeping the paper in another room in case it is becoming damp, new fuser units.

 

Understandably the art department want to throttle me.

 

Before they do, what do other schools use, any thought on continuous feed ink jet systems?

 

Many thanks

 

Do you mean full page colour prints jamming in the fuser?

 

It happens with ours too.

 

Ben

[plexer]

I have had this problem with an HP4650.

 

I found the solution was to increase the top margin via the web control panel...

 

If I can find the time when I am at school tomorrow I will post more details...

 

Yes please.

 

Ben

[dhicks]

We have tried changing paper

 

Have you tried thicker (higher GSM) paper / card? Less likly to curl as it goes through the fuser. Can you change the paper thickness setting on the printer - some printers let you set a "thickness" setting, if you have it too high the printer will heat the paper for longer and the paper will curl more.

 

any thought on continuous feed ink jet systems?

 

I've used them in the past - they offered a decent price-per-page for nice glossy full-colour prints and it is possible to get proper colour-balanced inks for use with a screen calibration peripheral so you can match the colour on the screen to the colours coming out of the printer. However, laser printers last rather better in a school environment - continuous-feed ink systems have large ink tanks to spill (accidently or otherwise, depending on pupils), and inkjet machines tend to print rather slowly.

 

Dpending on what, exactly, is being printed, rather than sugget they simply go and use Jessops or similar themselves you could use an online print service's API to send print jobs straight from your system to their orders system, so people could "print" to a virtual printer and have a poster-sized print turn up by post a few days later. Also, seemingly the new iPad's screen has good enough colour reproduction and resolution to to use as a preview-as-printed monitor, although how you go about applying a custom colour profile to an iPad I don't know.

[CESIL]

I might add that this problem only started after I started buying compatible cartridges...may just have been a coincidence but who knows...

 

I will look for the info tomorrow

[bossman]

@all:

 

We had this problem with one of our HP4600n's, resolved with fitting new fuser unit as staff members had put scissors through it whilst trying to unjam the paper which had wrapped around the fuser. Its all to do with the temperature of the fuser and once a fuser has gone it cannot keep a steady temperature and often gets too hot which turns the toner into a sticky glue or vice versa it doesn't reach the temperature that is required to fuse the toner to the page.

 

Its been working a treat now and we use compatibles also

 

@Wirral_Wonderer:

We now use a managed service for our Art and Design Technology printers which print both A3 and A4 and are capable of heavier card which our DT uses for designed boxes.

Edited March 27, 2012 by bossman