Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2023 January 21

= January 21 =

Printer Leaves Streaks on Paper
I am using a Brother HL-23660W monochrome laser printer, being driven by a Dell desktop computer running Windows 10 (because it isn't eligible for Windows 11). I am having an annoyance that when I print, the printer sometimes leaves dark horizontal streaks on the paper. It does this most often on the first page of a document or the first copy of a letter that I am printing more than one copy of. So a workaround has been to print two copies of a letter and throw the first one away, or print a test page. I haven't been keeping track of whether the problem is worsening, but I have the subjective feeling that it is worsening. My question is whether I should: (1) remove the toner cartridge, shake it, and put it back; (2) replace the toner cartridge; (3) replace the printer. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Hmm. This online manual page is not exactly for your model number, but that probably doesn't matter.  It says in case of horizontal "lines across the page", you should try these steps:
 * Clean the corona wire inside the drum unit.
 * Clean the drum unit.
 * The drum unit may be damaged. Replace the drum unit with a new drum unit.
 * This page shows you how to clean the corona wire: open the cover, remove the cartridge and drum unit, and slide the green tab back and forth several times.
 * Hope this helps. --142.112.220.65 (talk) 03:37, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Cleaning the corona wire by sliding the green tab back and forth several times seems to have worked. Thank you.

Robert McClenon (talk) 07:35, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Follow-Up
I haven't yet tried cleaning the drum unit. I think that the problem is developing again. My question now is whether it is cost-effective to replace the drum unit. What does the drum unit cost? I think that I bought this printer in early 2019. Is it worthwhile to replace the drum unit rather than the printer? How much would the drum unit cost? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:08, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Stupid Printer Properties Questions
Now I have some stupid questions about Printer Properties. When I am selecting a printer (the only one that I have attached, but anyway), there is a link from inside Word or a button inside Acrobat for Properties. The Properties allow me to specify various information, including Resolution (300 dpi or 600 dpi), Text or Graphics, type of paper (plain, thick, thin, recycled, labels). Does specifying Text improve the quality of the print, or do nothing? Does specifying Graphics improve the quality, or do nothing? What is the purpose of specifying the thickness of the paper? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:50, 21 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I found some information about the relevance of paper weight from Xerox. It seems that the additional mass of thicker paper entails slower printing, partly because it doesn't move so easily, and partly because it takes longer to heat (if heat is relevant). Text vs. graphics remains somewhat mysterious to me in real terms. It may be relevant that fonts are made out of vector graphics, but the practical effect of that escapes me. Card Zero  (talk) 07:15, 21 January 2023 (UTC)


 * If the printer can do 600 dpi, it has 600 dots every inch that can be either black or white. If, alongside black and white, you also want 3 shades of grey, it has to group these pixels in clusters of 4 and make 1, 2 or 3 of these black, effectively printing in 300 dpi. If you want 15 shades of grey, it can only do 150 dpi. Which of the pixels are turned black matters. When printing text they may be chosen to increase sharpness at the expense of accuracy in density (=the exact shade of grey), when printing graphics some sharpness may be sacrificed for greyscale accuracy. So I suspect this text versus graphics setting affects the dithering or halftone algorithm. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:49, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I have used the 'Labels' setting in Word (to print labels, surprisingly enough) sending jobs to a shared print server for printing on any one of a number of available printers, and it had the following effects: The printer stopped at the beginning of the print job, and asked for confirmation that the selected paper tray was indeed loaded with labels, and the printout was automatically set to single-sided. Which of these effects were actuated within Word, the local printer driver, the print server or the selected printer I cannot say. -- Verbarson talkedits 21:45, 21 January 2023 (UTC)