Posted by HisHughness on 4/7/05 3:51pm
Msg #30224

Printer issue

My laser printer is in the shop, with a part on back order (I think for my next purchase, I'll probably look at peripherals other than H-P; I'm really dissatisfied). Anyway, I am using my Inkjet.

I have encountered a bit of a problem. It has a brand-new cartridge, but is printing light. Does anyone have any idea how to increase the blackness of the image?

On another matter, when dealing with my laser printer, I learned something startling. The industry standard for pages per minute, my repair technician tells me, is that a printed page is only 5 percent covered. In other words, if your printer is advertised at 20 pages per minute, that means 20 letter-size pages with only 5 percent of each page covered with type. In order to achieve 20 pages per minute -- supposedly the rate of my HP255L -- each page would only have 4/10s of an inch of type. And that, says the techie, is the industry standard. I feel had.

Reply by LT_SOCAL on 4/7/05 4:09pm
Msg #30228

Hey Mr. Hughie....have you tried going into the printer utilities and adjusting the print options. You can change the options to make it print darker or maybe it just needs to be clean. Your utilies should be able to run that as well. If it is a new cartridge it should definately work unless you got a bad cartridge. Hope that helps. By chance if you do not know how to get into your utilities= right click on the printer go to properties and the menu should give you the cleaning options.

As for your other issue on feeling had...sorry bout that.

Naive notary girl.

Reply by HisHughness on 4/7/05 4:18pm
Msg #30231

Before you posted your suggestions for curing my printer problem, did you check around to see if there was anyone else with more experience than you in that area, and, if so, did you demurely acquiesce in them reponding by stepping back, bowing so low from the waist that your forehead touched your toes, mumbling all the while, "Humble newbie is humbly sorry for arrogantly preempting your response and humbly asks forgiveness and vows eternal contrition"? If not, then you are in trouble. The technical term for your situation is, I think, "Your ass is grass!"




Thanks.

Reply by LT_SOCAL on 4/7/05 4:40pm
Msg #30233

Your so funny. I forgive you.

Reply by Art_MD on 4/7/05 8:55pm
Msg #30283

Re: Printer issue - 5% coverage discussion

I have a brothers 5140. I can get a printout that will list the number of pages printed and the percent coverage average. Having run a number of sets of standard e-docs thru it, my average coverage is 6.87%. That seem logical since there is less white space on legal docs. So from my point, I using approx 36% more toner/page than the industry standard. Also, speed in not a function of coverage. If I have one dot on a line or 65 dots on a line, it prints at the same speed.

Art

Reply by Nd_WA on 4/7/05 4:41pm
Msg #30234

To my knowledge with injet printers, there should be a "grey scale" setting in the print property where you can set the print resolution.

The 5% coverage you mentioned probably applied toward pages yield of the toner capacity. My 6K pages cartrige ran dry at 4200 pages. Could there be a misunderstanding with your tech? Print speed is set by the manufacture relative to the synchronization of the motor/rollers/processor/memory. To achieve that specification, your printer must assumed to have full capability to handle a given job.

Reply by HisHughness on 4/7/05 5:05pm
Msg #30241

Thanks for your proffered assistance everyone. However, with my unparalleled analytical skills, my surpassing expertise, my finely honed mechanical and electronic instincts, my unexcelled proficiency, my methodical implementation of both deductive and inductive reasoning, and my expansive knowledge base, I concluded that I should look at the cartridges (that’s what we undisputed geniuses do after we’re screwed up two closing packets). I had inserted a photo color cartridge where the black & white cartridge should be.

ROCK ON, HUGHNESS! I d’ man!!!

Reply by Terri - CA on 4/7/05 5:15pm
Msg #30243

Actually the "techie" is right. I worked for a laser printer manufacturer for over 9 years. And yes the rating of ppm is based on only 4 to 5% coverage or print on the paper. Yes, this and the rollers speed etc all work in synchronization, but the calculation only uses 4% to 5% printing on the paper is like, a very short sentence on the page all by itself.

Sorry to hear about your printer problems!

Terri
Lancaster, CA

Reply by HisHughness on 4/7/05 5:20pm
Msg #30245

Terri commisserates:

***Sorry to hear about your printer problems!***

D' man done fixed his printer problem. See earlier post.

HISHUGHNESS ROCKS!!!

Reply by Ernest_CT on 4/8/05 12:58am
Msg #30327

You were the victim of a bad design!

The printer itself and the cartridges themselves are to blame. It should not be POSSIBLE to put the color cartridge into the black slot and wiser worser. The toner cartridge goes into the laser printer only one way.

I'm not touching the "Over or under?" question of the roll in the smallest room in the house. That's a personal decision.

Reply by Stephen_VA on 4/7/05 5:22pm
Msg #30246

A page is 80 square inches. So 5% is 4 square inches. Still a small amount, but I would imagine that is probably pretty close to you average business letter worth of text. Still a silly way to measure the **print** speed since essentially they are telling you how fast the paper moves through the printer.

Reply by PAW_Fl on 4/7/05 10:01pm
Msg #30286

Printer "speed" is not how fast it moves through the printer. It that was all there is, then it would be easy to calculate the paper travel path and speed. However, the limiting factor is the transfer and fuser rate. A 5% coverage factor is equivalent to a average 2 paragraph business letter. Most formed letters are white space with very little graphic representation, so it does take a considerable amount of letters (lower case K, if I remember correctly is the character we used at NEC) to create a 5% coverage. Now if it was simply a black smudge spot, then the spot would have to cover ~4 square inches [.05 x (8.5 x 11)] or a 2"x2" square.

The speed at which the electrostatic transfer and subsequent fusing of the toner is what determines the throughput speed more than the mechanical aspects of the pinch rollers pushing the paper along the path.

Reply by Joan-OH on 4/7/05 10:47pm
Msg #30297

"The industry standard for pages per minute, my repair technician tells me, is that a printed page is only 5 percent covered. In other words, if your printer is advertised at 20 pages per minute, that means 20 letter-size pages with only 5 percent of each page covered with type. In order to achieve 20 pages per minute -- supposedly the rate of my HP255L -- each page would only have 4/10s of an inch of type. And that, says the techie, is the industry standard. I feel had."

_______________________________

I have never taken the 5% coverage to mean 4/10s of an inch. I think of it like this. 100% coverage would mean a totally black 8.5x11 page - completely covered with toner. Now imagine the entire page is white and a little more than 1/2" is completely black on the top. Take that 1/2+" and spread it around for all the print on a piece of paper and see how far the toner will carry you down the sheet. There's a lot of "white" in those letter, above, below and beside those letters. Depending on how much print you need on the sheet, it's going to carry you pretty far down the page @ 5%.

I got the same explanation from an office max kid (in hushed tones like it was an industry secret) when he was trying to tell me my toner, which is rated for 3000 pages @ 5% would only give me a couple of hundred pages the way I'm using it because 5% was only about 1/2" of type. I couldn't get him to understand that 5% was overall solid toner coverage. Since I DO get about 3000 pages printed from my toner, I have to imagine I'm right and he's wrong.

Hugh, I don't think you've been had. Your techie obviously went to the same class as the office max techie. Please forgive me if my explanation seems too elementary. It's just hard to explain in print and has reduced me to using elementary visuals.

Joan-OH

Reply by Michael / Ak on 4/8/05 10:09am
Msg #30366

Did you read

Did you read all the posts starting from the begining? More than likely the question you are asking has been answered many times.

Reply by Ernest_CT on 4/8/05 10:07pm
Msg #30590

(ROFLMAO) Go Michael! Score! n/m

Reply by BrendaTX on 4/8/05 10:23pm
Msg #30591

Snicker. n/m