Completely dead M255dw laser printer - repair options?

[danderson32]

So, I my printer is completely dead--won't turn on at all no matter what I do. It's 2-3 years old and saw moderate use for maybe half of that.

I started having issues with this printer about a year ago when some electricians were at the house and were turning the house power on and off quite a bit. Eventually they came over to me to tell me my printer was smoking, as it had been power cycling for probably 15-30 minutes as they flickered the power. I was away at the time and wasn't there to unplug it. It smelled pretty bad and there was a decent amount of smoke, but it was unplugged shortly after it started smoking.

Surprisingly the printer was okay and continued to print normally for a while so I didn't question it. Then, eventually, it would begin smoking again like it did before if you tried to print more than maybe 10-15 pages (not steam/vapor from the paper. Actual smoke, accompanied by the smell of burning toner or plastic). Then, recently, while it was printing it just turned off completely and has been dead ever since. Tried different cables, different outlets, nothing. 

Unfortunately, the device is out of warranty so I can't file a warranty claim. But this thing was like $300 dollars and has a relatively new and unused set of toner in there, which are $100 each. I'm willing to pay someone to fix this thing but I don't even see an option to do this. Seems insane that I can't get a $700 dollar device fixed. If I had to guess, it needs a new power supply or possibly even fuser, but I'm not really qualified to assess this, despite being a pretty tech savvy person. I haven't been able to find someone else with a similar problem to mine. What can I do?

[Repairatrooper · Accepted solution]

Your choices are really to find a local technician to take this on or fix it yourself. Ebay or local marketplaces online are good places to find parts.  In my experience if you were getting smoke then I would look at power supply as the likely culprit as a damaged fuser would trigger an error code most of the time.

[danderson32]

Thanks for replying. That's what I was afraid someone would say. 

I'm probably capable of repairing it myself but can't really  seem to find any kind of information on replacement, or even the parts themselves outside of one storefront on aliexpress. 

Would be great if someone from HP could chime in here...

[danderson32]

So, I was able to repair this printer and it is now working. I firstly wanted to thank you repairatrooper for correctly identifying the culprit and allowing me to repair this, and I also to provide more information for others who may have this problem.

When it was pointed out it was probably the power supply, I realized that what caused the printer to break in the first place was actually probably a power surge. I was having serious electrical problems at the time and had other devices/power strips get fried, but assumed that this wasn't the case for the printer since it continued to function after the incident. This assumption was wrong. It was definitely a power surge, as after taking out the power supply, the capacitor was swollen and somewhat charred.

Fortunately, I was able to find both a video of someone repairing a very similar printer (I'll link it below), and a replacement power supply (OEM) on Ebay for $60. It wasn't hard to replace. The instructions for repairing the power supply on this printer are nearly identical to the M252, M274, and M277. The M255DW just has a slightly different board layout (to fit this particular printer) and an extra screw or two.

https://youtu.be/dn7GtXGAgvg