[rescue] Tektronix Phaser 840 plus

[Thomas Gallaway]

Andrew Weiss wrote:

> On Jun 17, 2004, at 10:24 AM, Ethan O'Toole wrote:
>
>> A black and white laser printer is probably the most economical 
>> printer to
>> run.
>>
>> To be honest, I got like 28 expired ink carts that fit my designjet
>> plotter from a chick on eBay for something like 35 dollars. It makes
>> plotting out stupid things possible, without worry about costs.
>>
>> I got the set of tektronix colorstix to test the phaser 340 for $25 on
>> eBay, one of each color. Maybe two black ones, don't remember. Ebay 
>> is the
>> source for economical stix, if you have a printer that prints right.
>>
>> There is *some* information on fixing them, but I think they expect 
>> you to
>> have an adjustable vacume pump with a wax trap thing in order to suck 
>> the
>> crusted wax chunk outta the head or some such.
>>
> No you need a vacuum gauge.  The pump is built into the printer.  The 
> most common failures on these printers are bad cap/wipe gaskets (which 
> cause clogged nozzles, and other printing problems because of no clean 
> cycle), notched lift pins on the drum maintenance drawer... causing 
> buildup of ink on the drum and a tearing sound as the paper exits, bad 
> drum maintenance clutches (causing frequent jams with no paper 
> present), and occasional y-axis problems including belt tension which 
> make the printer sound like a chain saw.
>
> I have service manuals if people need them.

It actually does the tearing sound when it exits. I might see if I can 
get a cleaning assembly as I heard that be4 that that could be my issue. 
They are like $200 isch I heard. I hope it's not the print head.

A service manual would be helpfull. If I took a picture of the magenta 
lines that are causing problem is there a way to find out from that if 
it's the printhead or the cleaning assembly. Some jets do actually work 
just partial but some have like a weird pattern to the failure. It is 
hard to describe but I'll take a picture tomorrow.

-- Thomas