I noticed strange artifacts on prints of a Kyocera FS-C5100DN color laser printer and I’m curious what the likely causes are.
Basically the prints have 2 flaws:
- Each page has a ~ 1 cm grey vertical band/stripe, spaced 2.5 cm from the right border. Mysteriously that band is matched on the back (spaced 2.5 cm from the left border then) where the top 4 cm centimeters are much more opaque and seem to contain also colour toner, even when printing simplex and monochrome!
- Most pages contain faded mirror images, vertically offset.
See also the following photos of a test page:
The printer is almost 15 years old, only received one replacement set of Kyocera manufactured toners and generally experienced low printing volumes.
The total pages printed counter now reads 4800 pages.
I’m using the printer on linux using the vendor provided kpdl file (with cups). Most of the times I’m selecting monochrome printing, which seems to work, as the printer’s job log lists a few jobs as ‘Black & White’.
The ghosting effects started 3 years ago. At that time it helped to switch to a general PCL driver (which also lead to faster printing), but that work-around didn’t last and the ghosting re-appeared later, in companionship with the stripes.
Are these flaws typical signs of a/several failing component(s)?
And/or are these flaws potentially reversible by some typical service procedure?
