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October 25th, 2008 19:00

Flaking Toner, Low Temp Problem?

I have a Dell 1720 printer which has been working with no issues.  Recently we printed some images and the toner flaked significantly.  At the time the ambient temp was about 50 in the room containing the printer.  In the printer specs the minimum operating ambient temp is listed as 15C (59F).  Could the low ambient have caused the flaking toner or should I be looking for some other problem? I would have thought that the fuser bar temp would have been far more significant in the fusing of the toner than the amibient but perhaps the cold paper is a significant issue?

20 Posts

October 28th, 2008 12:00

Hello Neils47,

Yes, I agree with your assessment that the room temp is the cause of the problem.

It's like painting the front porch while it's raining... you are not going to get the best results.

 

For any printer to burn the toner onto the page, the printer manufacturer is assuming that the printer will be in the general temperature range. If not, then results will not be optimal. The fuser bar temp is set within a specific range. Too hot = the paper will be more "brittle". Too cold and, well, you know the results on that one. :-)

 

If it is not an option to raise the room temp -or- move the printer to another (warmer) room, then you could try to print pages without solid images. A spreadsheet or a text-only document might be ok because there aren't "chunks" of toner. But trying to print solid images will remain hit and miss.

 

Best of luck... and ask whomever has you working from this room to get you some gloves!  ;-)

SpenCer

3 Posts

October 28th, 2008 13:00

Thanks for the response. That confirmed my suspicions. Re the gloves, the printer is in my home office on the 3rd floor of my house. At night, I turn the thermostat down to the minimum to save oil. In the cold weather, the office gets down to 45-50 overnight and this printing was done in the middle of the night. This is my first winter with this printer.  Never had any problems with my previous (non-Dell) printers in the cold weather but I guess this printer is more sensitive to low ambient.
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