Panasonic laser copier/printer; bad toner or dirty drum blade?

[videobruce]

I have a older Panny laser copier/printer/scanner (MB-271). The drum is fairly new. I don't print often.
The cartridge ran out, I refilled it with toner that I bought 5/22. Is that considered too old?
The printer was printing fine. Now after filling it prints dark on one side, and gray on the other. The text goes from black to gray and the background goes from white to gray.
I contacted the place (AAA Toner) where I bought the toner and he claims it's the drums wiper blade. If so, why so suddenly?

 

[The Hat]

The cartridge ran out, I refilled it with toner that I bought 5/22. Is that considered too old?

It might have something to do with how you refilled..

The old cartridge needs to be flushed of all old toner, use a vacuum cleaner or air hose and then refill, if any of the spent toner remains then you’ll always get issues with print quality, even if its OEM toner..

 

[videobruce]

There was little toner left in the cartridge. The cartridge opens up when you insert into the the drum unit emptying out it's content. The toner is all in the drum, not in the cartridge other than the coating on the inside of the container itself.
I've never had any other Laser printer other than this one and it was the 2nd same model I just placed in service a year ago that replace an existing one, same model. This unit probably has less than 2k copies on it.

What I don't get is the prints were perfect before the toner ran out. The supplies claims the 19 months age of the toner is not the issue, but I don't understand how a drum unit can just go bad with the next print?? .

 

[videobruce]

I did open up the drum unit and cleaned it out including what appeared to be the 'blade' which didn't seem dirty. I haven't tried printing yet. I did empty and clean out the reservoir area in the drum thou. I haven't printed yet.

 

[videobruce]

I did some test prints and they are far better, but there is still a residue that gets worse towards the left side. The text itself seems mostly ok.
The page count on the copier is 3200. The count of the new drum itself is 1800 so I can't see it being a high count issue.

One thing I forgot to do which just dawned on me is I didn't shake the bulk toner bottle before i filled thew cartridge and I also didn't shake the cartridge to distribute the toner across the width.
How much of a issue is that?? It never occurred to me until I started thinking about everything.

Anyone else chime in here??

 

[Bruno HECQUARD]

Yes, it is always necessary to shake a toner cartridge, keeping it approximately horizontal.
This preliminary operation is part of the installation procedure of oem/prefilled cartridges.

If not shaked, the toner isn’t evenly distributed under the drum, which induces the type of phenomenon that you encounter.

 

[videobruce]

I forgot I had a original Panny toner cart. So I decided to clean out the drum again, hoping it was the toner, not the drum unit itself.
It worked, the prints seem fine except for a faint residue on the far left of the page which you have to look closely for.

When I tried to message AAA Toner (apparently no one there speaks English) he tried to blame the machine, not his Toner. IOW's, blame everyone else but his product which I just proved him wrong.
That outfit is the only one that I have been able to find that sells bulk toner for that model.

 

[Smile]

Hard to say what part is bad, but it's the cartridge problem. Bad wiper blade i would say or bad doctor blade

 

[videobruce]

"cartridge" or drum?
The cartridge only holds the toner that empties it into the 'hopper' of the drum.
Assuming you meant the 'drum', I just proved it was the toner since the prints are 95%+ good. I tossed the over 18 month old toner, it's not worth destroying a $130 drum unit that is almost impossible to find anymore. I tried and found a couple I snagged up since I like the machine.

 

[Smile]

I bought some carts from china for my old LaserJet 6L, has similar problem, I had to replace the wiper blade and toner roller from known good cart.