Color ink dust all over inside of printer, printing artifacts on printed pages

[edgeofmysanity]

Hello,

I bought a used HP printer LaserJet 2500n for a very reasonable price.  It works well overall, but does print with ink artifacts on the page.  The marks are especially at the edges of the page, but sometimes other locations scattered all over the page.  In the cartridge area, there is a scattering of dust on top from yellow, magenta, and cyan cartridges.  I opened the back panel to look for an unrelated jam, and at that point discovered there is also a great deal of dust all over – magenta on left, yellow in middle, cyan on right, if that means anything or makes any difference.  The dust is heavy here, both on the inside and on the panel portion that pulls out to reveal this compartment.  (There never seems to be a problem with the black, either in dust accumulating, or ink artifacts on printed pages – only the colors.)   

When I noticed all this dust, I cleaned it out meticulously – I was hoping maybe it just had something to do with being jostled around during transport - but after the very next print job of just a few pages, the dust was all over again – as shown in the pictures.  All cartridges in use are HP OEM.  Drum is brand new out of the box, and also HP OEM – changing the drum didn’t make any difference.  I’m hoping to figure out what else can be done to help the situation so I can continue to use the printer for some time yet.  It came with a stockpile of cartridges I’d like to be able to use before upgrading, that will probably last me 2-3 years at the rates I tend to print.  I don’t know if the problem might keep getting progressively worse – hasn’t seemed to, but the marks do occasionally get heavier on and off and then will sometimes improve somewhat.  The spots on the printed page aren’t intolerable – and I’m kind of surprised it’s not actually worse with all this dust – but the print quality certainly isn’t great with those on it, and sometimes smears.  And the dust also kind of scattered when I opened the back, which is a pain to clean up.  Is there anything to be done/replaced to keep the dust from getting all over?  Or is this just something that inevitably happens as printers age? 

Any info would be greatly appreciated!  Probably because the printer’s several years old (or, you know, a few centuries when converted into ‘technology years,’) my internet searches to get info on this particular problem have been fruitless.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

[Repairatrooper]

Likely the Mylar seals in the cartridges are bad and allowing toner to spill into cavity of the printer. You state you have spares so I would try a new magenta first to see if this stops the magenta build up. This printer is well beyond a few years old, closer to 10 + years old.

[edgeofmysanity]

Thank you; both the magenta and the yellow have actually been swapped out since I got it.  The marks on the paper have been consistent in happening across both the replacement set and the previous, and the dusting is clearly happening with the more recent set too, as I cleaned the dust out and it was back again right away. 

Any other thoughts?  Thank you 😊

[Repairatrooper]

Typically when we see this type of toner dumping it is cartridge related. If there was an overfilled waste toner bottle the visible spillage would not be a distinct color it would be kinda muddy colored. Age typically does not cause a printer to do this but old cartridges can have brittle or degraded seals and cleaning blades that can result in toner dumping.