Heatsync's got a new(to us) Color LaserJet Enterprise CP5525dn! Care+feeding guide, Tips+Tricks

[cpr...@gmail.com]

I've hacked together a couple of the printers we got in to make a working one, and by hacked, I mean hacked. I forgot it was a tear-apart night and I sort of went rogue and had a put-together night.

There's a hard drive that was bouncing around in my bag for heaven knows how long powering the whole thing.
This specific printer was never configured with a hard drive, but rather a small form factor SSD which we have none of, but it's big brother had the option of running an internal spinning disk. As such we do not have the power/data combination cable, nor the plastic caddy to make this work, so I improvised. Why does this matter you might ask? Well the firmware of the printer sort of runs off ssd/hard drive, and is essentially dead to the world without it!

If you should need to get this beast running again from dead like I did, you will need:

1. a copy of the firmware
(this is the one I used)-> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3SEuN8YFVgwQ2h2Tk9DUnRRZzg/view?usp=sharing
2. a 2.5" sata hard drive, or the SSD that goes into this thing
3. a usb thumb drive
4. The printer's service code/pin which is set to 11552010 (Also useful for supply resets for the transfer belt and the fusor should the printer complain and not want to print some day)

You will need the usb thumb drive formatted fat32, and you can put that firmware file on the root of the thumbdrive. You can then use the usb ports on the formatter (there are 2 usb's actually on the formatter card itself (meaning inside the machine)
So obviously, power down the machine, unplug it, remove the formatter card entirely, stick the usb thumbdrive into one of the ports on the formatter card, put it all back together, plug it in, power it back up

Then you can choose Download->USB thumb drive->the firmware image, and it will load the firmware off of that thumbdrive onto the hard disk! DO NOT CHOOSE THE USB OPTION! it will not work!
I suppose there is a usb port on the front panel of the printer hidden by a piece of plastic, but I did not try using that, it probably works but I don't care, because this worked too and there is no reason to attempt it when I know this method works! If you get bored and want to risk wasting some of your time with that method though be my guest.

The sata data cable is standard, but the power connection for it is a bit custom, and since we don't have the tray that goes with the drive it never came with, I took liberties with it and just jammed the hard drive in wherever it would fit as far as the placement goes. I provided an external power supply which is actually providing juice to the hard drive. Should that become unplugged the printer will become very unhappy, so please try to avoid that. If you must move the printer: Turn off the printer from the power button first(1), unplug the printer power second(2), unplug the hard drive's power brick third(3).

Attached is a picture of what the entire assembly that we don't have looks like.
 
I figure we can remake that power cable no problem, and just check to see if the voltages match what they should. We only need the 5v rail and the grounds to power this drive, I am unsure if the orange one will read 12v or 3.3v, but if they followed the standard it should be 3.3v.  The size of the connector can be verified if you go upstairs, go to the left of the server rack on the shelf, and on the bottom of that shelf in a marked box with the spare laserjet parts, in the antistatic bag there is a spare formatter board. Attached is a picture of the formatter board with the power connector we need to plug into circled in red and notated.

The easiest way to make the cable would be to get a sata power connector from a dead computer power supply, and a IDC connector that fit the formatter's power header, make it long enough to poke out the side of the printer, in order to verify the red one is reading 5v with the power on, the orange one 3.3v, and both grounds not measuring any voltage relative to the case of the printer I guess.

Compare the connector to the one that's already attached to the drive to make sure the colors and voltages/grounds match up, and that will be one less hassle for running and maintaining that printer.

SPEAKING of maintenance,
Do not feed it anything other than copier/laser plain paper so that the transfer belt and fusors last as long as we need them to!
We do have a spare fusor in case ours burns out. Also a spare formatter board mentioned earlier.

The black toner that is upstairs is likely new and mostly unused, so when we run out of black, use that first.
The color toners (CMY), that are up there are all low, but still have toner in them, so use them up if you need to.
They are prime for rebuilding once they are empty.

You will need to get into the service menu if the printer refuses to print due to transfer belt life or fusor life, but you can just reset those I think. again you'll need the code/password thing of 11552010

Part numbers for the toners are as follows:
HP Color LaserJet Black Print Cartridge (~13,500 pages yield) CE270A
HP Color LaserJet Cyan Print Cartridge (~15,000 pages yield) CE271A
HP Color LaserJet Yellow Print Cartridge (~15,000 pages yield) CE272A
HP Color LaserJet Magenta Print Cartridge (~15,000 pages yield) CE273A

There is a waste toner container(called a TCU) on the back of the unit behind a flap, if it gets full it will throw an error on the printer, and my experience has been even if you try to empty it, it will continue to error, so just get another one if that happens. Part # is CE980A

And the most expensive thing we don't have a replacement handy for is the transfer belt.

HP LaserJet CE516A Transfer Kit(CE516A)

If you want to print to this printer, hook up to the heatsynclabs network, add a printer, and install your printer driver of choice!

https://support.hp.com/sg-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-color-laserjet-enterprise-cp5525-printer-series/4073016

I personally used the small universal print driver on my windows box, but this is a postscript printer, and pcl5/6, so linux guys should have no problem printing to it either.

It's setup at 172.22.110.245 for those of you who want to manually configure it, probably port 9100, but I don't remeber/care. (OK I do care, just not enough to drive over to HSL right now and double check)

It will print duplex (2 sided), so do use that feature!

Keep it as far away from the laser cutter as possible, as the dust from around that area seems to be good at killing color lasers (hence why the initial install point was near where HSLMAC is)

It is set up to sleep after 5 minutes or so and is also on the highest power savings it can obtain, so it will take a bit longer than it's rated 10 seconds to spin up, but it'll still print pretty quick.

It's got 2 trays currently, and if they stop working for whatever reason, the feeder rollers are easily replaceable and cheap enough. DO NOT try to recondition the feed rollers, as residue from the process will destroy the fusor, the transfer belt, and potentially even the drum assemblies on each cartridge (guess who found that out the hard way once?).

The maximum paper size it will print is supposedly 12.6in x 18.5in, whatever that ends up being, so you can buy Tabloid paper and print it with this printer!!!

I hope that frankenprinter, which now falls somewhere between a cp5525dn and a cp5525xpi, lasts us a long time.

[Eric Ose]

Cpro this is great!!! I'm excited by how much this is going to help me as I prepare for workshops and print guides on wiring up arduino etc.

-Eric Ose

Robot Ambassador

HeatSyncLabs Secretary

Southwest Maker Fest Co-chair

If you have questions about HeatSync Labs please refer to the FAQ and post any remaining questions or inquiries for help on the online discussion group. I will still get your message, but others with experience can also chime in.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HeatSync Labs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to heatsynclabs+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Eric Ose]

FYI I started a wiki page. I think the wiki is a better place to document our awesome tools; http://wiki.heatsynclabs.org/wiki/Color_Printer

Thanks again!

-Eric Ose

Robot Ambassador

HeatSyncLabs Secretary

Southwest Maker Fest Co-chair

If you have questions about HeatSync Labs please refer to the FAQ and post any remaining questions or inquiries for help on the online discussion group. I will still get your message, but others with experience can also chime in.

[Corey Renner]

" I sort of went rogue and had a put-together night"

That is awesome.  Nicely done.

c

http://www.thesaltedearth.com/

Blog:

http://coreyrenner.tumblr.com/

 

YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/vandal968

[cpr...@gmail.com]

Awesome and thanks!
We really do need a "WIKI" button on our front page written in big friendly letters, I keep forgetting that it even exists!

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to heatsynclabs...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HeatSync Labs" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to heatsynclabs...@googlegroups.com.

[cpr...@gmail.com]

Just wanted to make an update on this. The original black toner we got with the unit ran out, luckily I salvaged a spare when I built that printer up. It was reported to me to have been installed and going again on 1/3/2019. I don't think that one was full, so we should probably have a plan or some money squirreled away for at least a black toner. A new legitimate HP one is like $250 just for the black one, but considering we've been printing on the original cart from 05/20/17 up until 12/29/2018, that's not too bad. We'll see how much mileage we get from the leftover black, and the rest of the color carts.

The toner numbers for that printer are as follows in case for some reason you have them laying around.

HP Color LaserJet Black cartridge CE270A HP 650A
HP Color LaserJet Cyan cartridge CE271A HP 650A
HP Color LaserJet Yellow cartridge CE272A HP 650A
HP Color LaserJet Magenta cartridge CE273A HP 650A
I used to have a fellow who did reconditioning and refill of laserjet carts, but he's long gone. Does anyone have a favorite supplier? We do have an empty if we can find someone who rebuilds them or at least refills them. The cost of the carts is steep, so we should not buy them until they run out (the printer might have other issues before then, so it would be wise not to buy it and have it collecting dust)

So unless we find cheap supplies (or perhaps another one of those printers during a take apart night), this printer will probably be done for us once we run our supply of toners and spare parts out. Still not bad for free!

[Rick Blake]

Print.save.repeat may rebuild them, I'll ask.

[Rick Blake]

And yes P.S.R. has them $129.95 ea. I'll confirm color pricing. Amazon shows them $243-370 for all 4 reman. Retail new is $275/black $430/ea color. Woof. Transfer kit is a separate item, $350. The printer is found for <$800 used, if it came with new full toners those would be worth more... Usually these come with partially used supplies of course.

[Nate Plamondon]

My home printer has long been running Monoprice toner cartridges, and I've had zero problems so far.

A quick bit of searching has only turned up the BLK cart, but it's likely what we need first: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=9519

If someone wants to dig more, they probably have something compatible.

--
Nate Plamondon

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/heatsynclabs.

[Rick Blake]

Didn't look like the same product. If you missed my notes, Print Save Repeat sells these reman for $129.95 black or color.

[cpr...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the details, Rick! That's a supremely good deal, and with the yields we get out of that printer would be worth it. Thanks for the digging, at those prices it's fairly reasonable to keep this printer going as long as we can!

[cpr...@gmail.com]

Nate, that black cart is a 2,100 page yield, the one our printer uses is 13,500 pages. Sad to say, it's a different part number and monoprice has nothing for our printer yet. $129.95 is a heck of a deal!

[Nate Plamondon]

This is why you don't take the word of the guy doing 12 things at once as gospel. Thanks for keeping me honest. :)

--
Nate Plamondon

[cpr...@gmail.com]

I did a brain transplant on Bob Ross during HYH tonight (01/24/2019). Gone is the failing spinning disk I originally installed during the take-apart night I salvaged from a bag of salvaged parts, and gone also is it's associated power sucking vampire that was running it externally. In it's place is the correct HP 8GB SSD part that Rick Blake procured for us (Thanks, Rick!). I put the metal plate back on the printer, so you can't insert coins and other foreign objects into the cavity that holds the formatter board anymore. This is not a challenge, more a statement that now the printer's formatter board is now more resistant to inserting coins and other foreign objects into it than it used to be. Everything is set up as normal, all the settings are as they were before, and the result is you will not need to reinstall the driver on any computer or mobile device it had been running on.

[Cprossu]

Yesterday (11/10/2021) I removed the waste container on the back, the transfer belt and all the toner cartridges, cleaned it up a bit, and we'll see if the streaking continues.
The waste container had like 1-2lbs of toner in it, so I dumped out as much as I could and made sure the printer did not error out.

If so we have a different transfer belt if we need it, all colors are still printing, but we'll likely need to invest in some remanufactured toners soon(ish)

No telling how much more wear and tear it will take as is,

Transfer belt : 20% life left
Fusor kit: 80% life left.

Black cartridge: 10,170 pages printed (Low)

Cyan cartridge: 9,347 pages printed (Very Low)

Magenta cartridge: 9,347 pages printed (10% left)
Yellow cartridge: 11,215 pages printed (10% left)

We've got some pretty good use out of this machine.

[Shannon OBrien]

Thank you I appreciate the update 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/heatsynclabs/f5c6854f-a034-46b8-9130-36051c97c377n%40googlegroups.com.

[Cprossu]

The CYAN finally ran out, I put our other backup cartridge in there, it will not last that long. I also swapped out the low low black for our other low black.

This means we're effectively out of (free) supplies for this beast. Not too bad. Nearly 5 years of service for the cost of paper, electricity, and a secondhand solid state drive.

Kind of hard to believe, but we've printed over 23,000 pages since getting this thing

The backup transfer belt got ruined at some point between the move and now I am sad to report, so we don't have a backup one of those.

(we have a backup formatter board and a backup fusor still though)

Rick has to get a hold of his contact to see what the prices are like on remanufactured cartridges, that would likely be the only economical way to keep using this thing. For anyone who wants to help, all the details are inside this thread and up on the wiki -> https://wiki.heatsynclabs.org/wiki/Hewlett_Packard_CP5525DN(BobRoss)

[Rick Blake]

The local guy I know at a Print Save Repeat sells color carts w/15,000 page cap for $109 ea. Black w/ 13,500 page cap for $107 ea. He refills, so if our black cart is bigger capacity, we could get it refilled. These are CE270A, 272A, 272A, 273A carts. Amazon has refills cheaper.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/heatsynclabs/3a6d7cc8-f17c-43e7-8018-64ec3acb4cfbn%40googlegroups.com.

[Rick Blake]

Oh, and I should ask him about pricing for us. You never know.

On Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 4:46 PM Cprossu <cpr...@gmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/heatsynclabs/3a6d7cc8-f17c-43e7-8018-64ec3acb4cfbn%40googlegroups.com.

[Cprossu]

I just installed a brand new transfer kit to BobRoss, but all did not go as planned.

The belt looks like it's fixed the print quality issues, but when I put the new paper feed on Tray 2, something went wrong.

There's a one way sprag built into one of the rollers, and it apparently puts just enough pressure on the main paper feed roller to cause a paper jam (or at least a cam-out of the paper feed mechanism which causes it not to push the paper from the tray up into the rest of the printer.

I have no idea why this worked, but removing the sprag roller caused everything to work properly (*or so it seems). I'll have to research what that roller is actually for, and if we can get away without running it long term, but it seems to feed and be happy.

You all will have to test it out and try it, and see if there are any jamming issues or multiple paper feed (me and nate c think perhaps the sprag is there to eliminate the possibility of multiple sheets of paper feeding into the machine.

I packaged the original transfer belt in the new packaging, and put it along with the rest of the spare rollers (and the used ones, and the part I removed) upstairs.

If anyone has a problem printing from Tray 2, use Tray 3 or the manual feed Tray 1 that unfolds from the right side, they both have separate and different feeding mechanisms into the printer. If Tray 2 ends up being a hassle, we'll retire it and bolt a salvaged extra tray to the bottom, no big deal, and we have spare pickup rollers for those.

The working theory I have is perhaps I damaged the clutch assembly or it was on it's way out that's attached to the main rubber feeder, and just the little extra drag the one way sprag added was enough to cause the clutch to do it's magic to prevent damage to the rest of the printer. Thankfully Tray 3 and above all use a different pickup roller assembly, so if we add those we have parts for them, and they work differently too.

I do not foresee any complications from running without this part, but that's where the community comes in with testing.

Good luck and let me know if you run into any print quality and specifically any print jam problems with BobRoss. We'll play it by ear and if there is no problem, we'll just run it like this and whistle a happy tune! I will be on the lookout for some free spare parts and trays though just in case.

New Transfer Belt installed 07/19/2022