How to clean the drum wire

Sometimes you may see vertical streaks/black lines
on the faxes you receive. Either your FAX/MFC's
primary corona wire for printing may be dirty, or
the sending party's fax scanner may be dirty. Clean
your primary corona wire (see pages 13-18), or ask
the sender to make a copy to see if the problem is
with the sending machine.
Cleaning the Drum Unit
We recommend you place the drum unit on a drop cloth or large piece of
disposable paper to avoid spilling and scattering toner.
1 Carefully turn the drum unit upside down.
2 Clean the primary corona wire inside the drum unit by gently sliding the tab
from right to left several times.
3 Return the tab to the Home
position (  ) before
reinstalling the drum unit.

Sometimes you may see vertical streaks/black lines on the faxes you receive. Either your machine's
primary corona wire for printing may be dirty, or the sending party's fax scanner may be dirty. Clean
your primary corona wire. I recommend placing the drum unit on a drop cloth or large disposable paper
to avoid spilling and scattering toner.
1. Clean the primary corona wire inside the drum unit by gently sliding the tab from right to left several times.
2. Return the tab and snap it into the Home position, (Caution: If the tab is not at the Home position, printed pages may have vertical stripes).
3. Reinstall the drum unit into the machine.
4. Close the front cover.
5. Plug in the power cord first, and then plug in the telephone cord.
or ask the sender to make a copy to see if the problem is with the sending machine.
Try receiving from another fax machine.
If the problem continues, call Brother Customer
Service at: 1-800-284-4329 (in USA) or 1-877-BROTHER (in Canada).

Use the corona cleaning wire to clean the dust off. Open the front cover. Remove the drum/toner unit. look on the right side of the drum portion above the toner unit for a plastic tab with a triangle arrow that points to the left. Slide this tab back and forth several times. Move the tab back to the right. Reinstall the drum/toner unit. Close the front cover.

Clean the corona wire in this manner every time you change the toner/drum.

You should find a BLUE SLIDER on top of the Drum Unit, work it back and forth 10 times.

There is a blue colored slider on the drum unit, move it side-to-side 10 times.

The fax machine instruction must be done to erase the
message. The corona wire located on the drum needs to be cleaned.

Most common cause is a dirty corona wire and or drum. If after cleaning the corona wire and drum the copies are still mostly black and smeared, the drum may be broken.

clean the drum corona wire and see if that removes the line you can GENTLY clean the corona wire with a #2 pencil eraser

sounds like you are using generic drum and toner. try OEM (brother brand). you say copies are coming out completely gray. try printing an internal report from the control panel. if that is gray or received faxes are gray, then the problem is not in your scanner area, and i would wager you are using "generic" supplies.

hth,
razors

Sometimes the drum cleaning blade craps out. Remove cartridge and inspect the drum, it should be clean.