Dell 3110cn Faulty toner

Hi Steve,

Contamination of various components along the paper path can display as print quality defects. Often this problem can be resolved by cleaning the rollers along the path such as feed rollers, transfer roll, charge roll, and PC drum. When added defects such as smears, vertical lines, or spots appear on print, always check the fuser hot roller for contamination as a first step. When labels or other papers that contain adhesive backing are fed through the paper path, the adhesive has a tendency to bleed out onto the fuser hot roll during the fuse process. This causes print quality defects such as spotting, lines, and smearing.

The following procedure explains how to print the "ContaminationChk" pages to use as a tool in determining proper cause and resolution of image quality issues.

1. Press and hold the up arrow (^ ) and down arrow (v ), and then turn on the printer.
2. Release the arrows when Diagnosing... appears on the operator panel.
3. Customer Mode should appear on the operator panel. Use only the Customer mode test pages when testing print quality. Otherwise, improper user adjustment of software settings may cause you to make an incorrect or false hardware failure diagnosis.
4. Press the down arrow (v ) until the LCD displays Test Print.
5. Press the Select button.
6. Press the down arrow (v ) until the LCD displays ContaminationChk.
7. Press Select.
8. The LCD displays Busy while the 3110cn prints the "ContaminationChk" pages.
9. Examine the test pages to determine if the defect is being duplicated and also which pages are displaying the defect.
10. If only a specific color page is reproducing the defect, then that color toner cartridge is causing the issue. You can verify this if an identical known good cartridge is available to swap for testing purposes.
11. If the image defect appears on all color pages, then measure the distance between repetitions of the defect using the ruled edges of the color test pages.

Click on the link below for a manual for the Dell 3110cn. Check under 'Troubleshooting' section.

 Product Support for Dell 3110cn Color Laser Printer:  http://dell.to/16MCg7h

Please reply if you have further queries.

Thanks & regards,
Babita S
#iworkforDell
To know more about Dell Product Support, Drivers & Downloads, Order & Dispatch status -> choose your region ->
US Customers; UK Customers; India Customers. For Dell support videos click Here

I have done this and found that it was the Magenta Toner that was at Fault. Toner swapped to another 3110 and the same smearing effect happened.

My question is, as this toner has 80% life left, thats quite a lot of printing left in this, is there any way of clearing this defect or somehow re-using the toner?

Steve.

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your reply.

If you have purchased the toner from Dell, please send me a Private Message by clicking on my DELL-username and then clicking "Send a Private Message" so that I may assist you further. Kindly provide information as requested below:

• Printer Service Tag No.:
• Toner Order No.
• Registered Printer Owner's Name:
• Shipping address:
• Telephone number/s:
• Email address:

Thanks & regards,
Babita S
#iworkforDell
To know more about Dell Product Support, Drivers & Downloads, Order & Dispatch status -> choose your region ->
US Customers; UK Customers; India Customers. For Dell support videos click Here

Unfortunately it was not purchased from Dell, and am unable to find out the supplier at the moment.

Looks like I'm going to have to try and sneak as much life out of this without the users noticing, then dispose of the cartridge. Was just wondering if there was an easy way out.

Steve.

I have put in a new cartridge which initially cleared the marking, but it quickly returned. It is definitely the magenta cartridge causing the marking, so what could be wrong with the machine to cause some damage to the cartridge? Seems curious that I've got an 80% life left and a new, out of box cartridge both with the same fault? Even more curious is, we have 2 of the 3110's, the first fault was with a different machine, same marking though? 

Hello Tonerhelp,

Please see my response to your original post.

Regards,

Joseph E

[tag:iworkfordell]

I've tried everything recommended here, even Private Messaged the "Dell Support" staff (over a year ago without a response).  Zero success. Dell Fail.