I have Brother HL 1230 laserprinter that has all grey background on every pages but you could see the text or characters on paper clearly but has grey background. Do you think it might be bad toner cartridge or a possibility high voltage power supply? Let me know what you think?
Many thanks
Jason
Re: Brother HL 1230 by steve (1/24/03 2:42 PM) reply
Well. One of my friend gave me a Brother HL 630 that is doing the same thing. He has changed the Toner and no change. The drum for the HL 630 is $155 ( For a 9 year old Brother printer!!!!!). Well he gave it to me and it is sitting on a shelf. You might be able to clean the corona wire (?) and the drum use compress air and see if that will help. If it is the new drum that you will need, it is going to really hurt ($175 if I remember it right from OfficeMax).
I had exactly the same problem and thought it could be either the toner or the drum. I tried the toner first,and less expensive, and my gray background is gone. The gray appeared when my original toner expired and I had to replace it. I used the Brother genuine replacement but it appears this was the source of the problem. During attempts to fix it, I disassembled and cleaned both the drum and the fuser just in case, but nothing changed. Hope this helps
Re: Brother HL 1230 by Anonymous (5/26/03 9:51 AM) reply
Our office replaced the toner and still the same thing- greyish background. It is happening to two out of four of our printers and both are new. The data and alarm lights still flash even when we put new toner in.
Re: Brother HL 1230 by Spin2 (5/26/03 10:49 AM) reply
Look at your drum and see if it's dirty. (if you keep printing with an empty toner, your drum can be damaged or dirty). Clean it very gently, so that al the toner is gone. But be carefull that you not damage the drum.
About the lights: clean the contacts in the printer and the contacts of the toner. Shake the toner gently from the left to the right.
Had a simmilar problem with a 1240, gray overall cast to all pages. This is with a new drum kit installed and old toner cart. With new toner problem was gone. It would appear that a fault in the toner cartridge is the source of gray cast on this series of printers.
I replaced the drum with a good one and the problem remaned until I installed a new toner cart, perhaps the toner goes off after a while exposed to the air. Or perhaps the developer drum is faulty allowing excessive toner to transfer to the OPC drum.
However a new toner cartridge fixed it.
Jonathan Lowe.
Re: Brother HL 1230 by Spin2 (5/27/03 10:41 AM) reply
A grey background is not a fault in the toner cartridge on this series of printers. It's just a sign that you are out of toner. Like some toners print very light when they are empty, this sort of cartridge prints with a grey background when empty.
Spin2
Re: Brother HL 1230 by bri-tech (5/27/03 11:26 AM) reply
The fault is actually caused by paper dust collected by the drum and deposited into the bottom of the toner cart. It then gets carried into the dev unit and mixes with the toner. Eventually it will turn the background of printed pages grey especially when the cart has almost run out. The moral therefore is to use a good grade of paper with as little paperdust as possible. On very rare occasions the machines also need a new drum as well.
With regard to machines asking for toner when a new cartridge has been installed. This is caused by a build up of toner in the corona slot on top of the drum. Hence they ask you to clean it when you put in a new cart. The cleaner does bugger all however, and you need to use an air duster on it.
Re: Brother HL 1230 by massah (7/19/03 8:30 PM) reply
In general there is a bias voltage applied to the magnetic roller in the toner cartridge(development unit) that keeps toner from not adhearing to the drum in the white areas(non exposed areas). So if you lose the bias on that roller you will get grey backgrounding...before just throwing away your toner cartridge try cleaning all the contacts on it. If the problem persists even tho you have replaced the toner cartridge and cleaned all the contacts then you might want to consider the high voltage transformer board that supplies that voltage. Btw...air dusters are not a good idea to blow into printers/copiers...when toner is blown around it can create a static charge that could blow a board...it is a rarity but it CAN happen. Happy Fixing :P
Re: Brother HL 1230 by massah (7/19/03 8:30 PM) reply
In general there is a bias voltage applied to the magnetic roller in the toner cartridge(development unit) that keeps toner from not adhearing to the drum in the white areas(non exposed areas). So if you lose the bias on that roller you will get grey backgrounding...before just throwing away your toner cartridge try cleaning all the contacts on it. If the problem persists even tho you have replaced the toner cartridge and cleaned all the contacts then you might want to consider the high voltage transformer board that supplies that voltage. Btw...air dusters are not a good idea to blow into printers/copiers...when toner is blown around it can create a static charge that could blow a board...it is a rarity but it CAN happen. Happy Fixing :P
Re: Brother HL 1230 by streetbmx (8/14/03 12:40 PM) reply
I had the same problem. There is a glass window which gets dirty and less light gets to the drum causing the grey background. To fix this problem, remove the cartridge and with a damp cloth reach in and above about three inches in and clean the window. The results are amazing - just like new. Reg
I have a printer where all the lights flash. Could the Brother HL 1230 have stopped working because it is dirty in some way? Would paper dust build up in the printer to the point that it can stop working suddenly?
I will look forward to your response.
Re: Brother HL -4Ve by marian (1/9/06 3:28 AM) reply
I have Brother laser printer HL-4Ve;after cleaning the drum with cotton cloth that has got (not uniform on the all site surface but according to drum run=that look like:one horizontal grey, one horizotal white with narrow vertical grey strips and da capo ad fine =three set of that greish/white on the each page) grey background on all new papers taken from the stacks. Thanks in advance Marian
Re: Brother HL 1230 by penguin (2/23/08 7:17 PM) reply
I have a Brother HL-1440 laser that uses the TN-430 toner cartridge, and it was displaying the same problem (grey background). The Toner Low lights also started flashing at about the same timeframe as the grey background did. Based on what others were saying in this thread, I purchased a remanufactured toner cartridge (allinkforless.com).
I could see a light coating of toner on the drum, so I carefully cleaned the drum with a soft cloth, then installed the new toner - voila, no grey background any more, and the Toner Low lights are no longer flashing. Thanks to all who posted here for leading me to this happy conclusion.
I have an HL-1440 that had developed the "grey Background" problem. Thanks to everyone who has posted about this, the problem is gone. I tried a remanufactured drum, cleaning the corona wire, cleaning the electrical contacts, cleaning the glass scanner window to no avail. Replacing the toner cartridge did the trick. Either the cartridge was low on toner (although the low toner light had not come on), or it had failed in some way.
TIP FOR QUICKER DIAGOSIS: Comparing the new toner cart. with the old, I observed that the new one had a perfectly even, smooth coating of toner on the roller, whereas the old one showed definite vertical lines in the toner coating. Thanks again!
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