Repairing A Laser Printer Drum

[zzSleepyJohn]

I'm an old-fashioned codger brought up in the bygone days of post WW2 thrift, so I really hate the present day western world's throw-it-away-and-buy-new culture. One of the things I love about Thailand though, is how shops can often fix broken TVs, washing machines, video players and even laptop computers in their back rooms for a song.

But my problem is just a bit more specialised. I want to get my laser printer drum fixed. Now a laser printer's drum is just a glorified plastic roller with a fine and delicate coating of special electrostatic sensitive selenium material on the outside, and if they are damaged they can be touched up or recoated by someone with a bit of experience with the aid of expensive solutions and tools. A US-based firm Rotby Laser Images, Inc. shows exactly how it's done and sells all the tools to set up a business to do it on their pagehttp://rotby.com/purchase/ This isn't a d-i-y kit for a once-off user though, a business would need to repair quite a few drums to make it worthwhile.

Now buying a complete new drum assembly for my Fuji Xerox Docuprint 203A costs 75% of the price of a new printer, and buying a new toner cartridge costs 50%, so buying these items new just isn't an economic option. Repair or 2nd-hand refurbished replacement drum is what I need.

These laser drums are in photocopiers as well as in laser printers, so there must be thousands and thousands of them around in Thailand with a fair proportion of them wearing out or getting damaged, and I just can't believe that when they get into trouble their owners have to replace the whole machine. There must be repair businesses around who refurbish drums at a price less than the cost of a complete new drum assembly.

So my question is who are and where are these repair businesses, and how could I get in touch with them? Anyone got any ideas or experience with a bad drum on their laser printer?

[Darrel]

"Now buying a complete new drum assembly for my Fuji Xerox Docuprint 203A costs 75% of the price of a new printer, and buying a new toner cartridge costs 50%, so buying these items new just isn't an economic option."

Those prices are pretty standard for most laser printers.

In my experience it is usually (but not always) worth replacing the cartridge(s) but when the drum goes you should just buy a new printer. I wouldn't trust a reconditioned drum to last.

Edited January 14, 2012 by Darrel

[impulse]

I'm in agreement with Darrel, but to each his own.

There are quite a few shops Pantip Plaza that sell reconditioned printers and I'm sure they could help you out. That, of course, assumes you're in Bangkok and it's feasible to get there.

You can also try Fortune Tower at MRT Phra Ram 9 (sp?), but the character of that place seems to be changing with fewer used and reconditioned vendors and more homogeneous shops that all sell the same selection of identical new stuff.

[zzSleepyJohn]

Those prices are pretty standard for most laser printers.

Yes, thanks for the comment. I guessed as much, and it still leaves me unhappy with the throw-away pressure the situation is exerting on me.

In my experience it is usually (but not always) worth replacing the cartridge(s) but when the drum goes you should just buy a new printer. I wouldn't trust a reconditioned drum to last.

Perhaps I should have explained in my OP that this is a 5½ year old printer that's spent most of its time just stored away through 5 monsoon seasons without airconditioning, and I doubt if it's printed more than 150 sheets in total in its whole lifetime. After the first monsoon season, each time I've got it out to try and print something, I've had to open it up and polish the drum to minimise repetitive black dots and splodges spaced at exactly the same as the drum circumference. What I'm looking for now is some kind of economical fix that will give me another 5½ years of similar very low usage and long periods of storage. I know low usage is a problem on all kinds of printers, but lasers still fare a lot better than ink-jets in this situation.

[zzSleepyJohn]

Thanks impulse.

There are quite a few shops Pantip Plaza that sell reconditioned printers and I'm sure they could help you out. That, of course, assumes you're in Bangkok and it's feasible to get there.

It would be quite a long walk to Panthip since I'm living in Chiangrai, so I was thinking more in terms of finding an address where they actually do drum refurbishment on the premises., and shipping mine there. According to that US firm Rotby who sell all the refurbishing gear, a recoated drum will last forever, so what I'm looking for is an outfit that has the gear and the expertise. Every laser printer and every photocopier has a drum, so there must be businesses in Thailand somewhere, doing actual drum refurbishment work. The question is where?

You can also try Fortune Tower at MRT Phra Ram 9 (sp?), but the character of that place seems to be changing with fewer used and reconditioned vendors and more homogeneous shops that all sell the same selection of identical new stuff.

Hmmm.. it's sad to see Thailand following the western world and slipping more and more into the throw-it-away and buy new culture. I suspect we all know it's unsustainable in the long run, and the tide has to turn again.

Edited January 14, 2012 by zzSleepyJohn

[rakman]

Thanks impulse.

There are quite a few shops Pantip Plaza that sell reconditioned printers and I'm sure they could help you out. That, of course, assumes you're in Bangkok and it's feasible to get there.

It would be quite a long walk to Panthip since I'm living in Chiangrai, so I was thinking more in terms of finding an address where they actually do drum refurbishment on the premises., and shipping mine there. According to that US firm Rotby who sell all the refurbishing gear, a recoated drum will last forever, so what I'm looking for is an outfit that has the gear and the expertise. Every laser printer and every photocopier has a drum, so there must be businesses in Thailand somewhere, doing actual drum refurbishment work. The question is where?

You can also try Fortune Tower at MRT Phra Ram 9 (sp?), but the character of that place seems to be changing with fewer used and reconditioned vendors and more homogeneous shops that all sell the same selection of identical new stuff.

Hmmm.. it's sad to see Thailand following the western world and slipping more and more into the throw-it-away and buy new culture. I suspect we all know it's unsustainable in the long run, and the tide has to turn again.

When you consider the costs of stripping, reprocessing, reconditioning, replating, testing, regulations, etc, etc of the process to do a drum, does it make economic sense? If you think so, then maybe you've found a market niche to start a business.

But if others, like you, only need a drum every 5 1/2 years (or never as the refurb supplier claims) how do you get enough business to be profitable or even cover expenses?

Seems to me a more "sustainable" plan would not buy the printer in the first place and use a print shop to print what you need when you need it.

[Darrel]

Perhaps I should have explained in my OP that this is a 5½ year old printer that's spent most of its time just stored away through 5 monsoon seasons without airconditioning, and I doubt if it's printed more than 150 sheets in total in its whole lifetime......

Next time, put the printer (or the drum, if feasible) in a sealed plastic bag with some sachets of silica gel.

[Darrel]

According to that US firm Rotby who sell all the refurbishing gear, a recoated drum will last forever,

If so, don't you think that more people would be offering this service and more users having this done rather than buying new drums or new printers?

[zzSleepyJohn]

Next time, put the printer (or the drum, if feasible) in a sealed plastic bag with some sachets of silica gel.

Yes, absolutely! That's a good suggestion and it's what I was planning to do if there's going to be a next time, but if I listen to all the advice I'm now getting, including our friend rakman above about using printshops instead, it doesn't look all that likely there's going to be a next time.

[zzSleepyJohn]

If so, don't you think that more people would be offering this service and more users having this done rather than buying new drums or new printers?

Thanks. Hmmm... you're right though, it's not looking very promising I have to admit, but it just seems so crazy to dump the whole printer for the sake of one darned"red roller" Anyway, I shall keep persevering and try and make sure there really aren't any specialists with the gear and expertise anywhere in Thailand before I totally give up. After all I've nothing much to lose. I haven't yet been able to talk to anyone with real experience in servicing and refurbishing laser printers and copiers, so I think a search for an outfit that does that should be my next step. There must be plenty of those around, especially since Thailand is quite high up in the global league of resourcefulness in fixing old gear.

[Darrel]

I'm currently umming and ahhing about whether to buy a Brother black laser printer for 2000B, or just to continue using print shops. I hardly ever do any printing; most of what I've done the past year has been to do with forms for new bank accounts. As I've pretty well done all I needed to do in that respect, I suspect that all I would use a printer for this year would be for doing my own copies of documents for my visa extension, and printing out the pre-completed form.

The toner cartridge that the Brother comes with is good for 700 pages, which will probably see me into the grave.

[zzSleepyJohn]

Darrel, We have a printshop in town here that does A4 photocopy sheets for 1baht so that's quite a strong argument against bothering with any printer of my own. On the other hand that 2000baht for a Brother is a pretty strong argument for having one, and it makes my attempts to repair my old drum begin to look non-sensical. I didn't realise new lasers had come down in price so much. My old one cost just under 4000baht 5½ years ago.

Can you remove the Brother's toner and drum unit easily so that you can pack it away in tinfoil with silica gel, like you suggested, between rare printing sessions? With hindsight I daresay if I'd been doing that with my Fuji Xerox's toner and drum, it would still be giving me good clean prints today, but we live and learn, don't we!

Yeah, 700 sheets would see me through to the pearly gates too. Maybe even beyond!! _{{Peter, may I bring my Brother with me?}}

[Darrel]

I wish we had 1B photocopying shops in Pattaya. 5B for photocopying/printing is about the cheapest I've come across, though I admit I've not searched in the back streets miles away from the centre.

You can certainly remove the toner cartridge easily enough on that Brother model. I think the drum is user-replaceable so I suppose that it can easily be removed and replaced. If not I would just keep the box and wrap the whole thing in cling-film. It actually comes with a silica gel sachet from the factory.

Some models of laser printer don't have a separate drum at all; it is part of the cartridge. My old Canon was like that. That might be worth looking into in your case.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Darrel

[zzSleepyJohn]

.... 5B for photocopying/printing is about the cheapest I've come across,...

Ouch! At that price, they must have seen you coming.

You can certainly remove the toner cartridge easily enough on that Brother model. I think the drum is user-replaceable so I suppose that it can easily be removed and replaced. If not I would just keep the box and wrap the whole thing in cling-film. It actually comes with a silica gel sachet from the factory.

I'm not convinced clingfilm around the whole body of the printer would necessarily keep humidity out on its own. I've been religiously wrapping my whole Fuji Xerox back up in it's original plastic bag and putting it all back in it's original box for storage, and that hasn't worked for me. In the days of floppy discs I used to wrap them up with re-cooked bags of silica gel and keep them in a tin box, and I would weigh the silica gel bags to see how much moisture they'd absorbed. The larger the storage area, the more bags were needed to keep the floppies from going mouldy.

So for my "next time" toner and drum storage (that's if there's going to be a "next time"), I want to be able to wrap them up as a small package together with a least a couple of re-cooked bags of silica gel, in tinfoil and maybe with clingfilm as well, and keep the whole package in a tin box.

Some models of laser printer don't have a separate drum at all; it is part of the cartridge. My old Canon was like that. That might be worth looking into in your case.

Being part of the cartridge, so long as the whole thing's easily removable, would be OK. What I reckon would be unacceptable, after my recent experiences, would be if the drum was installed in the main body of the machine.

But yes, you're right. Checking exactly how the drum is configured is going to be a critical factor in any "next time" printer I go in for.

Oh, the joys of being a careful thrifty printer-user! Why can't we print reams and reams every month and forget about saving the trees, like everyone else??

[Darrel]

Ouch! At that price, they must have seen you coming.

Pretty standard price here in Pattaya, I think.

I found a small Samsung laser printer today for 1800B so I went mad and bought it. The cartridge is somewhat smaller than the Brother one, and the drum appears to be part of it.

Personally I'm not unduly bothered about the humidity issue as I'm here all the time and use the aircon 24/7 (on a gentle setting of around 26-27 degrees). It's just enough to remove the humidity from the air and keep me from getting sticky.

[astral]

I'm currently umming and ahhing about whether to buy a Brother black laser printer for 2000B,

Read the reviews carefully.

I was in this market recently and the Brother machines did not do well on half tone printing

I ended up with a Samsung unit, a little more expensive, but I am very happy with it.

[Darrel]

Good advice, but the print quality doesnt really bother me as any laser is bound to be better than a print shop inkjet machine, which is the only other alternative available to me.

I only print simple typed letters and copies of scans anyway.

The Samsung I ended up with seems to work fine and at 1800B it was a little cheaper than the Brother. I printed 3 pages today, and I doubt it will be used now until March when I do my 90-day reporting.