HP CM2320nf MFP Faded/Washed Out Center of Page

[mcneishm]

I have an HP CM2320nf MFP laserjet printer. It is about 7 years old. Several months ago, copies began to appear washed out or faded down the center of the page. Shaking the black ink cartridge marginally improves the image tho it's worth it to note that the cartridge has around 40% left. The color cartridges are around 50%. I replaced the fuser but there has been no improvement.

Any ideas where I might look to correct this problem? I had tried to upload an image of a page but the upload failed. Perhaps the filesize is too large.

[cs_steve]

I have an HP CM2320nf MFP laserjet printer. It is about 7 years old. Several months ago, copies began to appear washed out or faded down the center of the page. Shaking the black ink cartridge marginally improves the image tho it's worth it to note that the cartridge has around 40% left. The color cartridges are around 50%. I replaced the fuser but there has been no improvement.

Any ideas where I might look to correct this problem? I had tried to upload an image of a page but the upload failed. Perhaps the filesize is too large.

You mention fading up the center when copying; do prints from your PC or internal test pages from the printer show the same fading? If this only happens with copies, then you should clean the glass scanner area up the middle with glass cleaner.

However, if this happens on prints as well as copies, the most likely cause is some of the toner cartridges are defective. You can't rely on the percentage of toner left, that is just an estimate of how much toner is left in the hopper; in an ideal world cartridges would always print 100% of capacity but toner cartridges (esp. cheap aftermarket brands) often fail well short of the estimated life.

If you want to be sure, create a 4 page document, one page for each color with a big rectangle for that specific color filling the page : so one page of black, one page of yellow, one page of cyan, one page of magenta. Print those 4 pages and inspect them. Most likely you will find that one or more of those colors is significantly off; replace the corresponding cartridges.

[mcneishm]

You mention fading up the center when copying; do prints from your PC or internal test pages from the printer show the same fading? If this only happens with copies, then you should clean the glass scanner area up the middle with glass cleaner.

However, if this happens on prints as well as copies, the most likely cause is some of the toner cartridges are defective. You can't rely on the percentage of toner left, that is just an estimate of how much toner is left in the hopper; in an ideal world cartridges would always print 100% of capacity but toner cartridges (esp. cheap aftermarket brands) often fail well short of the estimated life.

If you want to be sure, create a 4 page document, one page for each color with a big rectangle for that specific color filling the page : so one page of black, one page of yellow, one page of cyan, one page of magenta. Print those 4 pages and inspect them. Most likely you will find that one or more of those colors is significantly off; replace the corresponding cartridges.

Thanks. I tried this. Black is definitely bad. Cyan and Yellow are OK. Red is iffy. I will replace both and let you know.

[mcneishm]

I replaced the black and red cartridges. Problem solved. Thanks.