CP3525 Color Laserjet - replace transfer belt cleaning blade only?

[wny2016]

We have a pretty old - but very dependable - CP3525. When printing -  especially to a coated paper - it typically leaves vertical marks on the page, which can be removed by taking out the transfer belt, carefully wiping the toner residue from it, and running a cleaning page. Printing quality, after a couple of prints, returns to normal. The toner residue bottle is less than half full, and an inspection of the transfer belt assembly shows excess toner near the cleaning blade, which has to be vacuumed out.  I think the blade itself is the culprit.

If you look around online, there are lots of cleaning blade assemblies available from Chinese 3rd party mfrs. But there are only a few very unconvincing videos out there about how to go about replacing just the blade assembly.  The "official" viewpoint seems to be to just replace the entire transfer belt assembly, the ITB. These OEM kits are still around for this old printer, and of course, replacement is basically a one-minute job. What would you do to keep the printer running well?

[Valsimot]

If you get a whole cleaning assembly, it's like 3 screws pop out old pop in new 5 minutes to replace. It's not rocket science.

I would highly recommend against getting the cleaning blade only. Get the whole assembly.

[wny2016]

Thanks for your reply. I looked t some of the online videos that purported to show the blade assembly replacement - but there seemed to be a LOT of little gear wheels and springs and things that had to be carefully removed and then put back. Maybe I was not seeing the correct procedure, I dunno. It seems a bit odd that there doesn't seem to be a OEM HP replacement blade assembly per se. - but tons of Chinese clone blade assembly parts out there. It's either that HP just wanted to sell you the whole ITB kit (back in the day, maybe $500, now around for about half that...) as opposed to making a simple sub-assembly available. It looks like the overseas clone parts are about $40, whereas currently you can get the OEM ITB for maybe $275 or so. What are the potential drawbacks to just replacing the blade assebly?

[Repairatrooper]

Having done the blade only replacement successfully, I will say it is a bit of a pain and you need to make sure you have a proper toner vacuum to remove all the waste toner from the container. By what I consider poor design, the waste toner tends to build up inside of the waste bin instead of being dropped into the waste container at the front. Not having the printer level is a big factor in this as the toner is only moved by a vibrating spring that will not overcome gravity. Honestly @Valsimot  is correct, if you can get the whole bin assembly, I would recommend that. 

As long as the belt material itself is in good condition there is not a real issue with replacing the waste bin. Just ensure you do not touch the belt with any skin as this will lead to defects.

[wny2016]

Thanks very much for you input. I know about the waste container (CE254A), but what is the :waste bin" ? I have one of those Metro toner vacs on hand.  I just had a look at the toner collection unit - it isn't full by any means, but there is a note written on it that it was last replaced in 2017!  There is no alert on the control panel menus to replace it. I'm going to swap in a new one anyhow. I am cleaning off the belt from time to time to keep marks from appearing on the paper - and sometimes it takes a while to run the printer cleaning page, and then to remove the ITB unit and carefully clean it off. There is ALWAYS a lot of excess toner at the end where the cleaning blade sits.

By way of explanation, I got this printer -which was not heavily used - for free from a local industrial mfr who didn't want to have it serviced to correct the 59.F0 error. It took me a whole morning to fix that.  I use it all the time now.

[Repairatrooper]

Sorry for the apparent lack of clarity, likely results from different vocabulary used to refer components that HP does not provide or support replacement of. When  refer to the waste bin it is the assembly on the transfer belt where the waste toner is deposited in before being moved to the replaceable waste container.

[wny2016]

I get it. So a new ITB just replaces all of these things "blade/toner" components.