Dell 3100cn Laser Printer Logo
Posted on Feb 24, 2009

Dell 3100cn Smudges on all color except black

I have replaced the drum and yellow and cyan. All three colors streak when I print in those colors but black does not streak at all when I print a solid black page or use printer diagnostics. Does anyone know what this might be, and why black is printing fine?

  • cperillo Mar 02, 2009

    It does not appear to be the fuser. If I stop the printer in the middle of a job I can see the streaks are there before it gets to the fuser when the toner is still not fused to the paper. I have tried multiple applications and I have re-installed the drivers and used the printer on different machines. This is a real pickle.

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  • Posted on Mar 30, 2009
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This is actually a drum issue, although changing drums doesn't always fix it. The problem is the at the tolerances between the transfer belt and the top cover of the drum is too close so the belt can scrape on the ribs inside the cover, getting a toner buildup and causing streaks in the color. Notice it is not streaking the black; this is because the black is laid on the belt last and the belt does not go around again.

This is such a flaky problem because a perfectly happy unit can suddenly start streaking because of temperature changes or, I suspect, even something as simple as moving the printer can cause things to move enough to cause the issue. A good article I have found for fixing it is at http://www.ahfx.net/weblog.php?article=133. Dell forums also discuss this issue -- it's a known issue and I think Dell should fix it.

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  • Posted on Feb 27, 2009
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Sounds like the fuser. Try heavier paper settings (you have to change them in all 3: driver, printer itself and program you are printing from). If that doesn't work replace the fuser.

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