Vertical smudge on page with Canon laser printer (only when printingfrom black cart)

I have a few smudges on the page, all along a vertical line about a third of the way into the page

It doesnt always happen but sometimes there are 2-3 of them on a page. The smudges tear off to the right a bit and sometimes they are quite small and just manifest as wrongly formed characters.

Canon have said firstly that this results from bad communication between the computer and the printer, and that I should stop using a USB hub, but that didnt fix it. I may have lessened it slghtly.

Then they said it must be the cartridge. But changing it didnt seem to make the problem significantly better. It did a bit, though.

Does anyone have any idea what this might be please? Do I just go out and buy enough cartridges until I find one that doesnt do it at all? I have already spent more than the printer is worth buying new colour cartridges recently and now the Yellow one has completely stopped the whole printer from working, even in black! I am wondering if I should bother buying a yellow cartridge if this problem isnt going to go away or is caused by some irreparable circuit or the drum or something (I recently replaced that as well!)

myfathersson wrote:
I have a few smudges on the page, all along a vertical line about a third of
the way into the page

It doesnt always happen but sometimes there are 2-3 of them on a page. The
smudges tear off to the right a bit and sometimes they are quite small and just
manifest as wrongly formed characters.

Canon have said firstly that this results from bad communication between the
computer and the printer, and that I should stop using a USB hub, but that
didnt fix it. I may have lessened it slghtly.

Then they said it must be the cartridge. But changing it didnt seem to make
the problem significantly better. It did a bit, though.

Does anyone have any idea what this might be please? Do I just go out and buy
enough cartridges until I find one that doesnt do it at all? I have already
spent more than the printer is worth buying new colour cartridges recently and
now the Yellow one has completely stopped the whole printer from working, even
in black! I am wondering if I should bother buying a yellow cartridge if this
problem isnt going to go away or is caused by some irreparable circuit or the
drum or something (I recently replaced that as well!)

Which model printer please?
Tony

Sorry I should have menioned: This is a colour one, an Imageclass 8180C and there is no smudging in colour. Does this mean that the drum must be OK?

I also dont think there is much smudging in test mode, though most of that is colour so i am not sure

myfathersson wrote:
Sorry I should have menioned: This is a colour one, an Imageclass 8180C and
there is no smudging in colour. Does this mean that the drum must be OK?

I also dont think there is much smudging in test mode, though most of that is
colour so i am not sure

The drum is probably OK and I would suspect the black cartridge. I believe the
repetitive image gaps are 76mm that means that measured vertically from the
start of one smudge and the start of the next smudge would be 76mm, if so the
problem is the cartridge. If the distance is different please let me know and I
will do more research.
Good luck
Tony

No, things arent that easy, though the regularity (lots of them do seem to be on the same position on each page) does suggest some problem with a roller? The marks are at 22mm intervals and not at every 22mm position. Towards the bottom of the page, the printer sometimes has even more difficulty;

The marks are all 30mm into the printed part of the page from the left (meaning assuming an inch and a half unused margin). but at the bottom There is a smudge at the 30mm position in and one about 10mm further over to the right on the same line.


The drum is probably OK and I would suspect the black cartridge. I believe the

repetitive image gaps are 76mm that means that measured vertically from the

start of one smudge and the start of the next smudge would be 76mm, if so the

problem is the cartridge. If the distance is different please let me know and I

will do more research.

Good luck

Tony

myfathersson wrote:
No, things arent that easy, though the regularity (lots of them do seem to be
on the same position on each page) does suggest some problem with a roller? The
marks are at 22mm intervals and not at every 22mm position. Towards the bottom
of the page, the printer sometimes has even more difficulty;

The marks are all 30mm into the printed part of the page from the left
(meaning assuming an inch and a half unused margin). but at the bottom There
is a smudge at the 30mm position in and one about 10mm further over to the
right on the same line.


The drum is probably OK and I would suspect the black cartridge. I believe
the

repetitive image gaps are 76mm that means that measured vertically from the

start of one smudge and the start of the next smudge would be 76mm, if so
the

problem is the cartridge. If the distance is different please let me know
and I

will do more research.

Good luck

Tony

Any chance you could upload a scan of a page with the defects to one of the
free services that allow this?
Your description indicates to me the possibility of an image defect that
repeats but that has more than one defect within it (hard to describe but a
scan would help).
Virtually all repetitive defects in laser printers are caused by a roller (the
exception being belts in some colour printers and very rarely other items in
the paper path), the trick is to identify the roller and this can be harder
with colour lasers.
Tony

Let me see what I can find: The problem is that the printer has been giving suspect Y cart error messages for about 4 months and now it says REPLACE Y CART so wont print even in black alone. WHen i take out the Y cart, there is Y toner all over the roller area and a bit on the wheels so I know the cart is completely dead

So I cant easily get another print out of a page of text unless someone can tell me how to override the cant print colour error message!

myfathersson wrote:
Let me see what I can find: The problem is that the printer has been giving
suspect Y cart error messages for about 4 months and now it says REPLACE Y CART
so wont print even in black alone. WHen i take out the Y cart, there is Y
toner all over the roller area and a bit on the wheels so I know the cart is
completely dead

So I cant easily get another print out of a page of text unless someone can
tell me how to override the cant print colour error message.

The best bet is a service manual, I have literally hundreds of them but not for
this model. In fact obtaining Canon printer manuals has alway been difficult. I
cannot find one for this model anywhere on-line either to buy or free.
The service manual would provide important information like whether you can
bypass the cartridge empty message or not and it should contain a repetitive
defect ruler which helps to diagnose problems like the ones you are
experiencing.
If you have the original page that you scanned and can scan it at a much higher
definition then that may help.
Sometimes there are patterns that repeat down the page (rather than one
distinct image that repeats) in that case it is the vertical distance between
the start of identical patterns that matters, not between different defects.
Tony

Direct link to the image:
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/12117732.jpg

Thanks for that Yianni, your posting makes things clearer for me as well!!

I couldnt see the problem all that easily on the photo and said that it wasnt particularly clear on my posted photo but on your annotated version, when I click to magnify by a factor of about ten or twenty, smudges start to appear all down the vertical line on the page, with the emphasis being only slightly marked at the 22mm marks.

I have thrown away the yellow cart and a new one is arriving in a day or so.. So presumably I can clean the lens if I can find it. Finding the fuser and cleaning that may well be slightly more of a problem.

I don't want to introduce any new concepts but I wonder if it can be relevant that since a short while before the problem started, the printer has been emitting curious whistling noises, as if something needs oiling. Is there any lubrication to anything inside this unit please? When it started, I took out all carts and the drum and there was quite a lot of toner of all colours (except black??) all over the lower part of the unit.Probably not all that much more than should be expected for a unit 4-5 years old which has never been cleaned. I cleaned a lot of it off, being careful not to spread while cleaning.