Faded Print or Banding
There is a tendency for the Dell 1320c to suffer from faded print along the left side of a printed page.
This may appear as a band of poor quality, faded print. Different colours may be affected but it is usually
black that is affected the most as it is nearest the top, followed by cyan and then magenta. Yellow is rarely
affected. This is to do with dust contamination of the optical system from toner powder and occurs with any
make of toner including the original toners.
Some owners have replaced the print head (transfer) drums and found no improvement in the print quality with the banding
occurring just as before. Others have been told that the use of aftermarket toner products is to blame but this is unlikely.
Inside the printer it uses a set of mirrors to direct the laser scan over the photosensitive print head drums
(PHD). When these mirrors become obscured by toner dust particles, the amount of laser light that is transmitted
is reduced resulting in faded print density for the colour.
The mirrors can be cleaned by using dry compressed air to blow away the contamination and tins of compressed
air may be bought from computer hardware suppliers or online retailers. For some owners, the force of air
supplied from a can has not been sufficient.
If you wish to try this yourself, you will need to remove the printer’s outer casing and some circuit boards
in order to get at the optical system. I can’t give you detailed instructions, but, if you are going to tackle
this yourself you will need to have an experience of working with mechanical/electrical systems and fully aware
of the safety and risks involved.
The cause of this appears to be from the way the printer is designed. The toner is fed from the toner cartridges
on the right side and through a series of channels to the print head drums. If the drums are removed and replaced,
some toner spills on the right side. There is other leakage of toner from general use too. Each drum unit has a
waste toner gathering blade and some of the particles of toner appear to spill out, become air-borne and fall
on surfaces such as the mirrors. Frequent use of a specialised vacuum to remove toner spills may reduce the
contamination.
Some users have found that this solution has not worked and by printing up to 100 prints solved the problem - quite expensive!
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