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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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those details, you need to review some recommended procedures for avoiding

those problems.

CAUTION Before you service a laser printer, always, always turn it off

and unplug it! Don’t expose yourself to the very dangerous high voltages

found inside these machines.

Laser Printer Maintenance

Unlike computer maintenance, laser printer maintenance follows a fairly

well-established procedure. Of course, you’ll need to replace the toner

cartridge every so often, but keeping your laser printer healthy requires

following these maintenance steps.

Keep It Clean Laser printers are quite robust as a rule. A good cleaning

every time you replace the toner cartridge will help that printer last for many

years. I know of many examples of original HP LaserJet I printers continuing

to run perfectly after a dozen or more years of operation. The secret is that

they were kept immaculately clean.

Your laser printer gets dirty in two ways: Excess toner, over time, will

slowly coat the entire printer. Paper dust, sometimes called paper dander,

tends to build up where the paper is bent around rollers or where pickup

rollers grab paper. Unlike (black) toner, paper dust is easy to see and is

usually a good indicator that a printer needs to be cleaned. Usually, a

thorough cleaning using a can of compressed air to blow out the printer is the

best cleaning you can do. It’s best to do this outdoors, or you may end up

looking like one of those chimney sweeps from Mary Poppins! If you must

clean a printer indoors, use a special low-static vacuum—often called a toner

vac—designed especially for electronic components, like some of the great

products from Metro Vacuum.

Every laser printer has its own unique cleaning method, but the cleaning

instructions tend to skip one little area. Every laser printer has a number of

rubber guide rollers through which the paper is run during the print process.

These little rollers tend to pick up dirt and paper dust over time, making them

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