I decided I'm going to try to fix my old printer.
I've had this Samsung C460W for probably well over a decade now. First printer I've ever had, and it was okayish. Print quality is serviceable but not great. It had lots of tray paper jams early on, but those went away. At some point Windows lost its ability to connect to the printer over wifi and needed USB instead, but Linux prints just fine over wifi. But Linux prints only black, no colour, somehow.
And this weekend I tried to print some stuff which went really slowly (according to my son, it suddenly started printing again 4 hours later). And eventually it started to smell while claiming a paper jam.
With some trouble, I pulled 3 sheets of paper from it. Two had been fused together and printed on both sides several times with an image I was trying to print (I don't think it's supposed to be a double sided printer, so I'm interested how that's possible), while the third has a brownish sheen and has been torn to shreds.
I have managed to print something after that, and that went fine, but got another paper jam after that. And the smell every time I tried to print. The smell is probably not healthy and I should probably just get a new printer.
But electronically it's fine. It clearly still wants to print, it's just that there's something stuck inside. I want to open it up and clean it, but it was hard finding how, until I saw someone mention a "fusing unit" and I searched specifically for that, and found this:
That's probably the culprit. And apparently it's possible to clean or replace it. And replacements cost
€ 55 at the biggest Dutch webshop: (bol.com/nl/nl/p/samsung-fuser-…) which is a lot cheaper than a new printer.
Of course that means I'd still be stuck with this versatile but problematic printer, but on the other hand, it means I don't have to throw it away. Or maybe I could fix it and then give it to some charity.
I'm probably going to fix it just to prove that this can be fixed. Not sure what I'm going to do after that, but I'm open to suggestions.
Brad Koehn ☑️
Als Antwort auf Martijn Vos • • •Martijn Vos
Als Antwort auf Brad Koehn ☑️ • •Mine never printed like a champ. It prints okay, and it can also scan. But it's always been a bit awkward. I think it's mostly the drivers and software that make no sense in Windows (Linux gives a more consistent experience), but colour prints have always been a bit disappointing.
So why am I so exited about repairing this thing?
I guess part of it is that I simply don't trust a next printer to actually be better. All printers seem to suck. (I sometimes hear good things about Brother, but they do mostly black; their colour printers are hideously expensive.)