I appear to have a problem of "ghosting" (quotes because I am not sure about the term) on an old Samsung laser printer. What happens is that the upper 10-15cm of the page are replicated at the bottom, while the rest of it is impressed on the following one. The areas whose "ghost" is more evident have fainter shades or missing spots. On top of that, it looks like there are thin (1-2mm), perfectly vertical bands where toner is missing altogether.
The service manual does not deal with this specific issue, only with periodic horizontal smears and vertical black bars, which I do not have. I quickly inspected the rollers and they do not appear to have any evident scratch or defect, but it might be that I really do not know what to look for.
What components should I hold culpable? Could this be a toner drum problem, even if it is reported at 50% of its life? Fuser? Transfer belt? Anything else?
52 Answers
Ghosting happens when the fuser applies insufficient heat to melt the toner onto the paper. There are 2 main reasons for it.
The first one is a faulty fuser. This can happen when the fuser gets too old. The fuser is actually a "consumable". Typically it lasts about 100,000 pages, but that varies from model to model. It also depends on what types of paper you have been printing. The thin, vertical bands suggest that there are other problems with the fuser.
The paper is the second reason ghosting happens. Unless you are printing on plain 80gsm bond paper, the fuser needs to apply more heat. This can be done by a higher fuser temperature, or by slower paper transport, so the paper spends more time in the fuser. Either way, to achieve this the printer needs to be told what type of paper is being used. In Windows (and OSX) this is done in the driver settings.
I would start by printing a single page that has a large image or photo on it (to ensure the problem will occur). Print 1 copy of that on plain, 80gsm paper and then remove the fuser from the printer. You should see toner sticking to the fuser rollers. If there is, the fuser is faulty and you need to decide whether to replace the fuser or the printer. With low-cost printers it may be cheaper to bite the bullet and get a new model.
If the fuser is OK, then please post a scan of a print showing the problem.
One day my Phaser 3010 started ghosting and printing smudges. I scoured the googlenet for an answer but all i could come up with is claims that it's either the drum or the roller or some form of physical wear fault on one of the printing components.
I was finding it hard to come to terms with this. The ghosting and the smudges started almost over night. I thought that something must have somehow ruined the integrity of the roller, somehow made it "dirty". So, i decided to try printing out a couple of black pages hoping the heat and excess ink would detach the "dirt", whatever the "dirt" may be. But it didn't help.
So i did this - took a flower pot mister and sprayed a single page of paper from a distance. Then i printed out 10 full black pages.
Then i sprayed a single page of paper from a distance and printed out 20 blank / white pages. It worked, there are no more smudges or ghosting.
The roller somehow got ditry in a manner that kept sticking printing powder to it. The heat of the first 10 black pages run starting with a moist page likely dissolved the "dirt". The following 20 blank pages starting with a moist page removed it. It really did. You could see the first few pages still having faint black smudges and then the next 12 being perfectly blank. And there you have it - that's how i fixed the ghosting and smudges issue on my Phaser 3010.
I'm sure this seems and likely is a very ill advised, poorly thought out and uneducated method. But it worked for me. If you are going to follow it you take on full responsibility for the possible negative effects. My printer was out of warranty and a very low-end model so i had little to lose.
If you are going to do it I have one tip which is that you should not get the paper overly wet, for obvious electronics and moisture reasons but also because an overly moist paper might make a mess on the roller that escalates the problem of a "dirty" roller instead of fixing it.
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