HP Toolbox - Activate to clean the HP 2600n Color Laser Printer

Print troubles and print quality irregularities are seldom encountered in the first few months run of a laser printer unit. Over time, toner and paper dust will accumulate over printer components such as the OPC drum, fuser assembly and even the mechanical rollers that come in contact with paper. This consequently affects component performance and produce print quality defects (like toner smears) over printouts. The only option therefore is to clean or perform maintenance work over affected components; which is tedious since that would involve dismantling pertinent printer panels to reach the inner cavities of the laser printer.

Maintenance work must be concentrated on the fuser assembly since the component does not have an automatic toner cleaning system. As the fuser generates a lot of heat, some of the toner particles tend to adhere to the fuser rollers and stick permanently, even if the cylindrical surface is coated with Teflon (a non-stick material usually coating frying pans). Consequently, a sizeable mass of toner particles sticking to the rollers can produce toner smears over printouts. Fuser rollers therefore need to be cleaned periodically to sustain acceptable print quality; unlike OPC drums that come outfitted with a cleaning device called the doctor blade. The doctor blade is made of thin and soft polymers that collect excess toner from the drum's surface and deposits it to the waste toner chamber of the toner cartridge.

Users of the HP 2600n color laser printer are fortunate because the printer unit comes with a built-in cleaning system that can be activated right on the printer's control panel. The cleaning procedure is outlined as follows:

1. Turn on the laser printer and be sure that it is set to ready mode.
2. Open the HP Toolbox from the printer's control panel
3. When the troubleshooting tab appears, click maintenance and follow it up by pushing the cleaning page icon. The printer will then print a document with printed pattern.
4. Remove all loaded print media in tray 2 and from the optional tray 3.
5. Take out the printed media with pattern and position it face down into the paper tray 2 or the optional paper tray 3.
6. Lastly, press clean on the printer panel
   

The whole sequence should clear the fuser assembly of baked toner and paper dust, and produce smear free printouts.

Print defects are the fare of laser printers and they are numerous. But when print irregularities are due to a low toner supply or an empty OEM toner cartridge, replenish the cartridge's supply with a compatible toner refill kit and extend its print capacity for up to 3 print cycles.

Look up our previous posts on the HP 2600n laser printer.