Xerox Phaser 3250 Printer

My unit has a Xerox Phaser laser printer in our clerk's office. The problem I am having is with print quality. Every page prints with an unsightly frayed black band on the left edge. I am probably using more toner on the ugly black band than that which would be used by all of the characters on the rest of the page. I assume this is a toner problem and/or may need a professional cleaning job. I don't want to spend $107.15 on a new toner cartridge just to find out the cartridge is not the problem. Any ideas?

See if another unit has the same model so you can try swap toner cartridges and see if the problem follows the cartridge or the printer. (And most likely, it is the cartridge.)

Funny story: A ward called me on a Sunday afternoon, and told me their Phaser 3250 was broken and they needed an immediate replacement. They knew it was broken because a member of the bishopric was a "computer professional". I told them to bring the printer to the stake offices, and I would meet them there. I swapped cartridges between their "dead" printer and the stake printer, and their printer was resurrected to life.
The red warning light had been flashing at them for weeks, but they didn't know what it meant.

Sad story: I had a ward whose Xerox 3250 printer died. I know it's not the cartridge, because I gave them another printer and used the old cartridge. What what I discovered is that the ONLY error indication you have is a solid red light. No blink codes, nothing. Not even in the service manual. Because of the delay in the status, I suspect it's some kind of fuser fault (not sensing that it's up to temperature in the required time frame).

It's out of warranty, so I'm just going to have it replaced. I'm not into working with a printer that won't work with me on it's problems. The only thing I can do is throw parts at it and hope I'm right.

I had a printer in exactly this condition. I brought it to another ward swapped as much stuff as I could, followed the online procedures from Xerox, including a firmware upgrade, but never got rid of that darn red light. Printer was out of warranty so it was replaced, the printer was 13 months old.

I haven't been very impressed with the Troubleshooting of the printer, but my experience with FMG replacing a needed printers has been excellent.

In this case, the flashing red light meant that they were out of toner. If you don't install the utility in the system tray to display messages in English, you have to fiddle with the button and light, as well as read the manual.
When we first received those printers a few years ago, very few of the clerks heeded my warning about the start toner cartridge, and did not immediately order a new cartridge. So when the red light started blinking after only a month, many clerks thought the printer was defective. I reminded them of the e-mail I sent to them when I installed the printers.
Of course, their next question was, "How do I order toner?" That is why I have dents in my forehead.

drepouille wrote:If you don't install the utility in the system tray to display messages in English, you have to fiddle with the button and light, as well as read the manual.

That certainly applies to the HPs, but I don't know as it applies to the Xerox that well.

And I've not been able to get the HP utilities to run. Something seems to prevent them from communicating with the printer.

Our stake clerk's computer has a Xerox 3250 and a Xerox M20i WorkCentre. A notification utility runs in the system tray at all times.