Printer Color Streaks

[Adrian110]

I've had my printer long enough that each of the toner cartridges have been replaced. I changed the red cartridge a few weeks ago, each of the other cartridges have 75%+ left on them. A couple weeks back, my pages starting having horizontal color (yellow, red, blue) streaks (3/4 inch) on the page, up and down with some white spacing. I believe I used the "clean" and "color calibration" features, which solved the problem. However, the problem came back recently and nothing is working to get rid of the streaks. Please help.

[Apone]

my guess would be the transfer belt is contaminated and causing those streaks, especially if you're noticing multiple colored lines. if you remove the toner from the tray, you'll see the belt sitting underneath.  the belt is extremely sensitive so I do not advise trying to remove or clean yourself if you aren't technical. 

[Adrian110]

Sounds like it could be, it doesn't look like they are cheap either, more than half the price of a new printer... One thing I should have mentioned, this problem occurs (almost exclusively) when printing in color, when printing just black ink, the printer works fine. The exception for these color streaks showing up when printing black ink, when I use tray 1 (manually put in paper to print on). If I use a regular size sheet of paper and print in black, it works fine. If I print on something small, like an envelope, and try to print in black ink, the color streaks show up then/again.

[Adrian110]

My printer is still under warranty, so I called HP and they walked me through a couple steps. Besides doing a cleaning/color calibration, I was instructed to perform a cartridge block test. There is a small (a bit smaller than a dime) metal circle on the one side of each toner cartridge (for M452dn cartridges, its on the left side if you pick it straight up from printer). I was told to put a piece of paper with tape to cover the metal circle, then put the cartridge back and print a demo page. I did this for each cartridge (individually), and typically this will show you which cartridge is bad (needs to be replaced), sometimes it can be multiple cartridges. In my case, just doing the test fixed the problem. After covering the first cartridge (black), the demo page printed without any lines (albeit no black ink), and same for each other cartridge (minus the color of the cover cartridge). I was told that the metal circle has a sensor that must have not been contacting correctly, causing the issue. When doing the test, I must have aligned the cartridge correctly so the sensor was working properly. My suggestion is to take print out a demo page, cleaning page, do color calibration. Then remove and put back the cartridges (check the metal sensor to make sure nothing is obstructing it) to possibly help align them. Hope this helps someone else.