Toner Leaking, Cleaning Blade Streaks at Room Temperature and Noisy Cartridges

Customers can experience toner leaking, cleaning blade streaks, or noisy cartridges when printing from any tray; however, at some point, if the customer has printed from tray 1, set the paper size and type to ANY/ANY to help avoid these issues. Any of these 3 issues can occur independently of each other. It is very important that you determine how your customer is using their printer. These issues can be caused from frequent printing out of tray 1, the 100 Sheet Multipurpose tray, only when the control panel is set in the PAPER HANDLING MENU to TRAY 1 SIZE equals ANY SIZE and TRAY 1 TYPE equals ANY.

Having tray 1 set this way causes the printer to go through an extra toner purge and cleaning cycle after each print job. Printing from tray 1 with these control panel settings will eventually prematurely fill up the waste toner hopper in the print cartridges. When the waste toner hopper is too full, the print cartridge could fail in several different ways.

Waste toner could start leaking out of the print cartridge; the cleaning blade could fail and start to put cleaning blade streaks on the fronts and backs of pages; or the waste toner hopper could get so full that it would prevent the waste toner stirring blade from moving, causing the drive gear to produce a loud clicking noise.

The Firmware on the DC Controller has been updated to fix this issue, but it cannot be flashed. A new DC Controller, the latest printer firmware, and a new set of print cartridges will prevent this from reoccurring, when being caused by the TRAY 1 SIZE, ANY SIZE, TRAY 1 TYPE, ANY control panel setting.

Follow the troubleshooting steps below to isolate the cause:

Verify which print cartridge is leaking, causing cleaning blade streaks, or making noises.

Verify if frequent printing is preformed through tray 1, and that the paper handling menu is set to TRAY 1 SIZE, ANY SIZE, TRAY 1 TYPE, ANY. Changing the setting to the correct media size being used will prevent further damage to the print cartridges, but does not correct the issue.

Complete the following steps:

Replace the DC Controller, then print a Configuration page. Verify that the Printer Number under the Printer Information Section is now listed as 6D or higher for the 4600 and 70 or higher for the 5500.

Color LaserJet 4600 DC Controller part number: RG5-6391-100CN
Color LaserJet 5500 DC Controller part number: RG5-6850-060CN
Clean any excess toner on the ETB and the interior of the printer, using a cleaning cloth (part number: 5090-3379).

Replace the print cartridges.

After replacing the print cartridges, it is fine to print in the TRAY 1 SIZE, ANY SIZE, TRAY 1 TYPE, ANY mode.

© 2005 Hewlett-Packard