Clean Drum Unit Brother Printer
Jacinto Man
If your printout has dots or other repeating marks at 94 mm (3.7 in.) intervals, the drum may have foreign material, such as glue from a label stuck on the drum surface. Follow the steps below to clean the drum unit.
Note: There can also be more complex issues such as shadows on papers specifically during duplex printing, even after drum cleaning. Some older Brother laser printer models may still exhibit issues despite cleaning efforts and following the manual.
Make sure to follow your printer's specific instructions and safety precautions as outlined in the user manual, as different Brother printer models may have slight variations in their drum unit design.
I've noticed though that lots of people online recommend that you clean them with isopropyl alcohol, yet the instructions from Brother specifically forbid the use of alcohol (and for that matter any liquids in general).
It mentions using a cotton swab after printing a Drum Dot Print to get specks and streaks off the drum. Can apply a bit more pressure and be more accurate with a cotton swab than with a cloth. (From the online instructions for Title: Clean the drum unit) There is a specific warning against using liquids on the drum surface which should probably be followed.
My wife wrapped two 8.5" x 4" adhesive labels onto an area 1/8th the size of the fuser drum in her Brother 8890-DRW; it was located on the left-hand side and rolled almost 1/2 of the way around the drum in a folded, jammed, corner shaped glob of destruction.
After convincing her that my many years of IT experience had prepared me for this problem, not unlike the myriad other showstopping IT fubar's I've unfubarred, and that she should dial back her automatic OCD picking mechanisms and allow me to remedy the situation rather than to proceed to use her fingers in an additionally fubar'ing attempt to unstick them while contaminating the drum with human salts, oils etc. (certainly not that it would be a bad way to go by the way, if you can imagine Mrs Universe de-label jamming a hosed up LASER PRN TONER DRUM; never boring, seriously).
So I took it to my Mad Lab (I don't do caves), separated the toner cart and proceeded to heat the label remnants with my rework station's hot air tool set at 190F for almost 30 seconds (via the left hand) and with the right I used a pair of plastic tweezers to easily remove most of the label remnants from the DRUM. This took all of 2 minutes because 190F seems to be a really good temp to heat label adhesive and the toner drum is designed for relatively high temps so the labels came right off after about 20-30 secs of heating (try to avoid extended heating though, if beyond 45 secs then back off for 30 secs before resuming). It can be difficult to grab the bunched, folded labels with plastic tweezers but I don't recommend using anything made of metal on anything made of "FUSER" (DRUM, ROLLER, etc.) because of the soft plasticity. Now you won't be able to get all of the labels off of the DRUM because, well, its heated label adhesive so you can gently push / 'scrape' the drum with any suitable plastic tool that isn't pointy, or sharp (even a plastic paint scraper will work, JUST BE GENTLE and don't wear out your welcome, etc). You can't be going into FLEA BITTEN MANIAC MODE to scrape off these labels, though. The heating tool should be doing the work and you should use almost no pressure to remove the labels (grasp them whenever possible). After you have removed as much as you can with the heating and tweezing (3 or 4 mins, don't over heat by lingering or using more than 200F) you can then proceed with the GRANDE FINALE or 'coupe de gras'. For this I use 90% isopropyl alcohol (lower % than 85-90 has too much water and will only smear, ultimately requiring a trip to the ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL STORE for 85% or above (you could probably also use ethyl alc (90-100 proof or higher). You really don't need any special, luxurious, lint free cotton or silk, etc. You can use the cheapest paper towel that Walmart carries, torn in half and then folded twice each way. Pour some alcohol onto the paper towel getting it fairly saturated but NOT dripping and proceed to clean up any lingering clumps of label and adhesive film that will remain on the DRUM. No need and not recommended to dry the DRUM afterwards. You can see the liquid evaporating and if you need to go over any spots again with the wet paper towel. Don't be greedy/stingy with them because you will start redistributing the adhesive, so replace the towel with a fresh one for heavy contamination. Its no super skill, you will quickly be really good at doing this and if you've never cleaned your DRUM before then you will probably notice improved printing (less spots, more white paper, cleaner, clearer, etc.) After you have the DRUM spotless put it all back together and print the night (or day) away.
Alcohol is an amazing all purpose IT cleaner and I honestly think Brother wants you to buy some sort of special brand (Brother brand) of DRUM CLEANER (most likely 80% isopropyl). These companies can be so misleading and manipulative. 90% isopropyl is the best printer drum cleaner I've ever seen; I've been cleaning LASER and INKJET PRNs with it for decades, so clean away and worry not! (Even if alcohol were somehow damaging to your printer, what good is a printer that is constantly jamming or printing illegibly anyhow? i mean in that situation your printer is essentially instantaneously useless, whereas some overly cautious users would have you believe that substances which can clean are going to somehow dissolve your printer, etc. (Really, its not common ordinary H2SO4 after all...).
Directly from Brother's website, contrary to what a person answered above, you most certainly CAN use isopropyl alcohol. Be sure to keep your hands away from the drum, as in the oils and such. Treat the drum like a Halogen bulb, use gloves. Brother recommends 91% isopropyl alcohol to be used, but a less concentrated is fine.
Before you go any further with this, where is this printer plugged in? The fact that the defect disappears after the first page suggests a problem beyond the drum, as a bad drum would cause this defect on all pages. The lines on the edges of the drum are typically due to less than perfect seals at the edge of the toner unit but present no issue as it is outside the printed area. While drums are light sensitive, it is not like photographic film that is instantly destroyed by exposure to light.
Based on your secondary photos, you likely have a bad drum unit. Check for a repetitive defect chart for your printer and it will tell you exactly where the problem is. As you have defects on all pages, which is not what you first stated, I agree with everyone that your drum has probably failed. Keep in mind that drum life is based on average print job being 10 or more pages. Drum life can be significantly less if you are printing single pages. This is because of the number of startup rotations of the print engine before actual print For example, if the printer makes ten rotations to prepare a print job, then printing a single page job is the equivalent of printing 100 pages all at once.
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The drum has to make several rotations per paper page, right? The printer is writing the page to the drum on 1 part of the drum while another part gets toner and then another part transfers the toner to the paper?
Startup means everything. The fuser has to heat up and rotates to prevent hot spots, the drum is turning at the same time, going through cleaning and preconditioning cycles. Also factor in normal embedded cleaning cycles that happen after a jam. There are a lot of moving parts in the whole process.
Sorry I thought the math was clear but let me restate. when you send a print job, the printer starts up and makes a certain number of rotations to warm up and get ready to print. For a single page job those startup rotations are the same as when you print 10 pages, so printing 10 single page jobs requires 10 warmup cycles, where as a 10 page job only requires one startup cycle. I chose an arbitrary number just to make math easy. Might only be five, but the fact remains that single page jobs are harder on a printer than multipage jobs.
Have you ever encountered a situation where the Brother printer says no toner after replacing toner cartridge? If so, you have come to the right place. This blog will introduce you in detail the reasons for the "no toner" error and how to deal with it. Please look down patiently.
Usually, no toner error in Brother printer is mainly caused by four reasons. Before we explain why, we have to mention the changes to Brother toner cartridges. If you are a loyal Brother printer user, you must know that Brother toner cartridges have no chips before 2017. And this does not affect the normal use of the toner cartridges.
When the printer is running and printing, the toner cartridge driven by the supply roller might lead to the separation of the chip and the printer probe. Then the printer can not detect the chip, which causes no toner error.
When the toner cartridge comes with no chip or an incompatible chip, your printer will not recognize it and display no toner error. An incompatible chip may be due to the wrong chip installed, a damaged chip, or a printer firmware upgrade.
When there are stains, oxidation, gum or other foreign objects on the surface of the chip, the printer probe and the chip may have poor contact, causing the printer to fail to recognize the toner cartridge and display no toner error.
When you purchase a new compatible toner cartridge Brother TN830, TN830XL, TN920, TN920XL, TN920XXL or TN920UXXL and encounter the "no toner" error, you can also perform this step to clear any error messages. If this doesn't work, you can completely unplug the printer for a few minutes, then plug it back in and turn it on. Usually your Brother TN830 printer or Brother TN920 printer will operate normally again.
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