Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 69
So, disclaimer, technician HP Printers here.
What I've seen, since i work with more LaserJets than DesignJets, but Mono LaserJets with integrated image drums on toner cartridges do have the image drums wear out. Modern Laser Printers for home use a combination toner, recovery container, image drum and developer unit. Believe it or not, the developer units have some iron mixed in with the developer powder to assist in the electrical charges needed. On large printers, there's a separate unit and we have to replace these, and/or refill the powder for that.
The image drums do in fact get bad on combined mono, but that's mostly because people use paper that ends up damaging it. Think like paper that has adhesive (labels), or foil (in transit stickers) or other things that can actually scrape and damage the image drum.
We've seen on ink printers where jams have been known to damage the ink heads, and I've seen this happen with my canon Pixma printers as well as my EcoTank.
Recovery ink pads on printers are a huge issue, as not many of them will let you easily replace them, let alone find a source (I can't find any for my canon, but I did for my Epson EcoTank).
My Canon has removable ink heads, for all 5 colors at once, but they are really expensive, wear down quick to where they start clogging, and are difficult to get them cleared again.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but a seperate ink head doesn't exactly fix issues, when people don't print a lot, the ink dries out and clogs the heads. So now you have some printers with non-removable heads, that are difficult to fix, and if you have an ink tank, good luck with the mess that comes from replacing the head and pulling the ink lines. You also have to purge the air from the heads and lines when doing that, and not every printer has the ability to do that. I know DesignJets do, but it's a messy process to swap the lines, and it's very lengthy to charge the lines and remove air.
There isn't a really good solution that isn't messy or expensive, unless everyone wants to go back to dot matrix. I've seen, no matter the implementation, there isn't an easy way to design a robust printer in which the heads will never wear out. Even the newspaper using lithography requires regular maintenance. How many of you do required maintenance on your printers? How about how many of you have replaced a fuser on a laser printer that requires tear aparts?
I do with HP made more easily repairable printers, especially for consumers, but in the meantime, there's a ton of ways I've seen people who work these, fuck up and damage the heads and drums from stupid stuff. I've also seen power supplies fry the heads, or damage drums due to plastic parts getting brittle and breaking.