HP LaserJet 2100SE

How to Identify and Fix Common Problems ?

Our sources include academic articles, blog posts, and personal essays from experienced technical support :

Smears and smudges on the paper can be caused by dirt, dust, or toner accumulated on the rollers or transfer belt as it passes through the paper. Cleaning your printer, particularly the rollers, is one of the options for removing black markings from paper.
Smears that appear in addition to otherwise well-formed output may signal toner contamination inside your LaserJet, either from a leaky cartridge or from improperly fused sheets that leave toner residue behind. Smears at the edge of the sheet that enters the printer first point to dirty paper guides.
Horizontal smearing indicates that there are fibers clogged at the bottom of the ink tank. If you notice this kind of problem, then take out the cartridges and start cleaning them. If your ink cartridges are more than a year old, they may have already dried out, or the print heads have become clogged with ink residue.
The best way to prevent smearing is to make sure you give the ink time to dry before picking up the copy or copies. It doesn`t take long, maybe 10-15 seconds. If that doesn`t work, try changing your printer settings for a lower quality print job. You generally have a choice, Best, Normal or Draft.
Laser Printers

Once they`re ejected, pages from a properly functioning laser printer can`t smear. A laser printer uses a solid material, called toner, to form the page images. Once the toner is stuck to the page inside the printer with an electric charge, the page passes through a special heated roller, called a fuser.

(smʌdʒ ) verb. If you smudge a substance such as ink, paint, or make-up that has been put on a surface, you make it less neat by touching or rubbing it. […]
If the ink is smearing, it probably is not getting enough drying time.
Laser printers use heat to fuse powdered ink onto the paper. It does not bleed into the paper, so it produces a very sharp, crisp result. These are the best printers for documents with a lot of words.
The material in the toner itself is designed to react to heat, pressure, and friction. Rubbing the image with excessive force will cause the toner to come off the paper. This is normal and does not indicate a problem.
If you`re experiencing ink smearing, the ink may not be drying completely because the standard print settings are too high, causing over-saturation of the label paper. A common solution is to reduce the quality setting.
When ink dries on a ball point of a pen, the ball no longer rolls smoothly on paper to evenly distribute ink, which creates blots of ink on a page. The same is true for inkjet printers when ink dries on the printhead — blots of ink appear on a printed page.
For healthier print heads and more efficient ink consumption, however, it`s better to leave your printer on. Constantly switching your printer off and on will decrease your printer`s lifespan, so try to keep the off/on to a minimum.
Dots are typically caused by foreign material inside the machine (for example paper dust, glue from labels or envelopes, paper clips, staples) sticking to or damaging the surface of the drum. Toner builds up on or sticks to these areas on the drum and creates black dots on the printed pages.
A printing defect characterized by a blurry and unclear printed image, caused by a wide variety of press and handling conditions.
Smudging is a technique of shading. A shading is first made on paper, then a finger or a soft material like a piece of cloth is used to smear the shading to make it smooth and well blended. In Grade 4, we will use different types of dry media such as pencils and charcoal to show the effects of light and dark.
smudgeproof (comparative more smudgeproof, superlative most smudgeproof) Resistant to smudging.
White lines will typically start appearing on your print outs due to a clogged up printer head. Your first port of call when solving this problem is to run the cleaning program on your printer, which should be accessible through its settings menu.
A standard bleed area is generally .

Most common document only require a . 125 inch margin; however, larger documents may require a larger bleed area. The standard bleed area for documents larger than 18 x 24 inches is generally . 5 inches.

“Ink bleeding” is the term most commonly used to describe the visual effect that can occur when print ink from the surface of paperfaced plasterboard becomes partially solubilised by the freshly applied paint system, resulting in an unwanted imprint or unsightly discolouration from the ink bleeding through the paint …
A cartridge may be running out of ink even if the graphic shows ink remaining (see the note at the start of this section). Lines or streaks always appear in printouts when the cartridges begin to run out of ink. Replace print cartridges that are out of ink or low on ink.
Laser printers use toner which will not dry out the same way an ink cartridge does. Unlike ink, which is liquid-based, toner is a dry powder composed of plastic components so it will not dry out. You can leave a toner cartridge in your printer for weeks untouched and it should still print.
White lines will typically start appearing on your print outs due to a clogged up printer head. Your first port of call when solving this problem is to run the cleaning program on your printer, which should be accessible through its settings menu.
Toner Rub Off or Smudging issues occur when toner is improperly or incompletely fused to the paper. This can occur if the incorrect paper is used, paper tray settings are incorrectly configured, or there is an issue with the Fusing unit.

Relevant Questions and Answers :

the most relevant questions and answers related to your specific issue

black smudge lines
ANSWER : Not knowing if the drum is OEM or remanufactured or if it is way expired, only thing I can suggest is looking at it. Take the toner out and turn it manually with your thumbs on the gear. The drum should be clean all the way around.

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HP LaserJet 2100SE

Smudging
ANSWER : are you printing on thick paper or paper with a rough texture. I have experienced the same. The solution was to change the paper setting for the bypass tray to “Thick 1” or “Thick 2”.

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HP LaserJet 2100SE

smudged parts on printouts
ANSWER : You don’t give enough detail. It’s doubtful the new drums would cause smudging. If it’s just one color, then look at the surface of the drum. It should be visible. If you don’t see it on the drum and it repeats several times on the page, then it would be a worn or dirty surface on the fuser.

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HP LaserJet 2100SE

smudge line across the page 3/4 way down
ANSWER : Only 2 things can cause it, the toner or the fuser. To determine which, you do a half-stop test. To do so, put a sheet of paper in the manual feed tray. Then send a print job while you watch the page. You want to open the lid about the same time that 3/4 of the page has just passed by the toner cartridge. Might take a few tries. This will stop the area with the problem after it passes the toner cartridge, but before it hits the fuser. You look at the paper and if you see the defect, then it’s caused by the toner cartridge. If not, then it is being put on by the fuser. It seems a bit strange to me because normally a defect like that will occur 3 times per page, which is about the circumference of the toner drum or fuser sleeve.

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HP LaserJet 2100SE

Smudges down right side of paper
ANSWER : That doesn’t make any sense. Sheets that feed from the manual feed or the cassette tray both converge before the toner cartridge. That would mean that the smudges would somehow be put on the paper as it was feeding upwards from the tray. There is nothing in the printer that could account for that happening.

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HP LaserJet 2100SE

Epson PX810FW printing issues, smudging.
ANSWER : Brisbane rubbish collection services have over the years made a significant contribution in keeping the city clean.

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HP LaserJet 2100SE

Printing smudge
ANSWER : Either the fuse or the drum. Look at both and replace whichever has the smudges on it.

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HP LaserJet 2100SE

11×17 prints with lines and smudges
ANSWER : Yeah, that makes it clear as can be. You should become a printer tech with your amazing insight.

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HP LaserJet 2100SE