HP 4050TN Print defect- intermittent

[napervillebaptistchurch]

Just ordered and installed maintenance kit for 4050tn. black line print defect has gone, but now am getting intermittent paper wrinkling effect. any ideas?

[Brian]

Where does it wrinkle?
Does the paper stop and give an error?

[napervillebaptistchurch]

the defect seems to be on the lower portion of the page (about the botom 2 inches or so, about 1/3rd of the way in from the right of the page, and it is a straight vertical line. No errors, just a slight wrinkle. I didnt think to try swapping back in the old fuser before i sent it back as core, leaving just the new rollers.

[ptjeff1]

It could be the fuser or registration assembly. If the wrinkle is a crease that has toner in it then it's probably the fuser. If toner is deposited over the crease then the registration assembly. It's hard to tell if the wrinkle is very slight.

[napervillebaptistchurch]

still seeming to get a wrinkle in page, but it doesnt seem to have any toner in/over it at all.

[redcow]

Print a page and as the paper is going thru the fuser open the top cover.
If the paper hasn't completely gone thru the fuser and the trailing edge is wrinkled...it ain't the fuser.

[napervillebaptistchurch]

It's hard to troubleshoot it this way, because it is seemingly intermittent, at least last I saw it.

[crimson]

In my case, the creases are more common if the printer is "hot" -- i.e. longer print runs. The first several pages are fine... but as the print job proceeds the creases begin.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[ptjeff1]

I just found out some info on the creasing problems. Please note that this is a very rare problem. The working theory is that longer runs of envelopes or other media with varying thickness will eventually warp the heating element in the fuser. When we have replaced the heating element in fusers that exhibit this problem the wrinkles go away. In the two cases we have seen the customers have regularly printed long runs of envelopes, shorter runs weren’t a problem. The envelopes will absorb heat only in the center of the heating element. I think it is further exacerbated by the fact that the LJ 4000/4050 fuser has a single long ceramic heating element as apposed to the laserjet 4100 heating element being segmented into three sections. My guess is that HP became aware of the problem and made the modification to the heating element with the introduction of the laserjet 4100.