Samsung Ml-1640 Printer Firmware Update

[Ottavia Delamar]

Forour business we need to print quite a lot of black text on a white background, and this is why after owning inkjet printers in the past, I bought a laser printer. The Samsung ML-1640 was very low cost, and seemed ideal a couple of years back when we bought it.

Sadly, like many products, this one is flawed. Samsung used some horrible techniques to stop you from refilling toner cartridges or using third party cartridges. I find this quite inexcuseable. Luckily, because we use Linux we never had the opportunity to let the printer upgrade its firmware which have resulted in refills no longer working - so for us they do.

Note that you should never remove the cover unless you know how to protect yourself from shocks. Never remove the cover when the printer is plugged in as the power supply board is live and note that capacitors on the board can store very high voltages even when the printer is switched off and disconnected from the mains supply.

After a couple of years of reliable usage, on one day in August 2012, the printer simply stopped working at the end of a print job. It was stuck with the red light on and nothing happened when we opened up the front door, the top door inserted or removed paper. The printer appeared to have turned itself into a paperweight.

I decided to investigate and found that the cause was simply that the top opening door had deformed with heat. The result of this was that a switch on the power supply board which disconnects the high voltage the heater when the door open, was never closing so the printer simply didn't work at all.

A little pressure on the top of the printer in the right place would make the red light go out and allow printing. However, obviously I don't want to have to lean on the printer each time I want to use it.

Note that this is a safety critical switch. It removes a high voltage supply to the heater when the top is opened. Do not bend the switch so far that it is always on - it must switch off when the top is opened.

Like many modern printers, the ML1640 counts how many "prints" are still in the toner cartridge without reference to actual toner content of the cartridge. This is why the red toner light can begin to flash before you've noticed any problem with print quality.

If you remove the single screw which holds the printed circuit board in place then you can swap the counter printed circuit board with that from another cartridge. Always remove the boards from cartridges which have given print problems before they have stopped working with a red flashing light so that you can use these in cartridges which stop with the red flashing light before they are actually out of toner. You will then be able to print with the not yet empty cartridge for as many pages as the counter would still have allowed for the older emptier cartridge.

The printer prints fine, except that the top margin is set at random, usually very small, cutting text on the top of page off. I tried updating firmware, getting new drivers, but nothing helped. I tried changing paper types, and it seemed that with the paper set as "plain" it was OK, but I just tried printing again after letting the printer rest for the night, and wasted 6 pages until I managed to print 2 boarding passes...

If you have a Samsung Ml 1640 printer, you may encounter a problem when the toner cartridge runs out of ink. The printer will display a red light and stop printing. This is because the printer has a chip that counts the number of pages printed and prevents overuse of the toner cartridge. However, you can reset the chip and continue printing with the same toner cartridge by following these simple steps:

Congratulations! You have successfully reset the toner cartridge of your Samsung Ml 1640 printer. This method works for firmware version V1.01.00.78. If you have a different firmware version, you may need to use a different combination of contacts to cover with tape. You can check your firmware version by printing a configuration report from your printer menu. You can also download a software tool that can reset your toner cartridge automatically from this website[^1^].

By resetting the toner cartridge of your Samsung Ml 1640 printer, you can save money and reduce waste. However, you should be aware that this method may void your warranty and affect the quality of your prints. You should also monitor the level of ink in your toner cartridge and replace it when it is low. Otherwise, you may damage your printer or cause a toner leak. To check the level of ink in your toner cartridge, you can print a supplies status report from your printer menu.

If you have any questions or problems with your Samsung Ml 1640 printer, you can contact the Samsung customer support or visit their website for more information. You can also find more tips and tricks on how to maintain and troubleshoot your printer on this blog. Thank you for reading and happy printing!

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