When is red NOT red?

When is red NOT red?  When you are printing with a poorly designed color LaserJet printer.  I don't know how many other color laser printers have this problem but it doesn't seem to me to be a necessary problem.  We have had our printer now about 2.5 years and lately have noticed the red printout looking a little washed out.  Sometimes it is so faded it is non-readable, other times it could be seen but was more of an orange or pink that it was red.

Thinking that maybe others had had the same problem I went searching the Internet.  I was totally surprised to see a posting that exactly fit my situation and gave exactly the instructions I needed to solve the problem.  In brief, it turns out that dusty mirrors were degrading the output and the solution is to clean the mirrors.  Sounds simple enough.  And the article even gave step by step instructions for doing so.

Here is a picture of the printer set on a festive poinsettia table cloth so I'll remember working on it during the Christmas holidays.  Although the instructions describe how to take off the left and right sides, I couldn't find a reason to do so.  That alone would have saved an hour or so.

Nine little screws are removed to reveal a couple of circuit boards and lots of cable.  The next instruction was to disconnect all those cables from their receptacles.  The instructions cautioned to keep track of the screws.  I found that they were all the same so that wasn't important.  Keeping track of which cable group went where was another matter. 

My solution was to slit address labels into 4 pieces lengthwise  then mark each cable group with the name/number of the receptacle they are removed from.  It was a life saver to have those little tags.

Removing the piece holding the circuit boards reveals the belly of the beast, the laser engine.  You still need to remove 3 screws to get that out and one of the screws has it's own secret chamber with sliding door to hide it away.

 And here is the little laser engine.  Note that there are four horizontal slit mirrors, one for each toner cartridge.  It is inside this box that the poor engineering shows up.

With the cover removed you can see all the mirrors which collect dust like all other shiny objects in your house.  The more dust that collects, the worse your transmission and the more faded your colors.  Here is where I carefully wiped every surface with two Q-tips although I couldn't see any dust or dirt on the first one.  I would think that better engineering would keep this chamber dust free with filtering and positive pressure, make the mirrors easier to remove and clean, or in the best of all worlds make the mirrors self calibrating.  I felt silly removing dust that I couldn't see.

Putting the printer back together was no more difficult than taking it appart.   My first attempt yielding a message in the error window that I had a "fuser error" that wouldn't clear.  By pushing in all the connectors I then got to "output tray jammed".  I decided to give it a rest then this morning rechecked all the connectors.  I found one that was hiding in the strands of cabling.  I plugged it in and the printer came to life, went through it's self checking routines, and announced itself ready to print. 

I printed some self-tests reports and found that, indeed, the colors were now darker, especially the red.  Is it good for another 2 years?