Up to My Eyebrows in Toner

My home business is dependent upon two major items; my printers.

HP DesignJet 600

I have an older model HP Plotter that prints on 36-inch wide paper rolls. I use it to print out my patterns. It allows me to make my home based patterns look professional. If I did not use a plotter I would have to do one of the following:

1. Trace pattern pieces onto newspaper rolls. Which is how I started out, but SO not professional.


2. Pay a professional pattern making company to print out my pattern for me. The minimum run for a pattern is 500 copies at about $2 a pop. Not happening.

So you can see how important this product is to my continued business. I managed to pick up the one I have off of craigslist for $250 about a year ago. The same model easily sells for $500-$750.

HP Color Laserjet 4050N

This is a large office printer. Also older. My printer has an extra 500 page drawer and a duplexer. I use it to print out all my instructions as well as my cover sheets and advertising pieces.

When new, this copier sold for clsoe to $3,000. You can purchase them used now for about $350. I picked mine up for $100 about 1-1/2 years ago. It uses toners which I am able to purchase on ebay or discount sites since the printer is older.

It prints beautiful color, pretty fast.

But what if . . .

Every time one of these two machines has an issue my heart stops. I don't have a back up of either and I don't have another way to provide what they both contribute.

I know enough about office machinery to know they need regular maintence, and they don't get it. I do try cleaning off rolers and such ever few months. I've even taken them both apart and located issues at least once during their life span.

But with either machine, I would be looking at a minimum of $200 for a house call from a technician. No telling what parts would cost me. And if parts were ordered, I'd have another house call visit to pay for. Easily paying more for the possible help than the printer was worth.

The bad news is I don't have money to have them fixed or replaced; I just need them to work. Which means they don't. For three days my color printer hasn't worked right. At first I was able to limp through the process and get out what I needed with tons of effort. Today I couldn't fill my orders at all.

I told myself it was simply a matter of cleaning them printer good. I had to wait until Will was in bed to work on the printer. Toner dust is very bad for you, especially so for the very young.

I just spent an hour and a half taking every easily removable piece of the printer and cleaning it in alcohol. I also used q-tips dipped in alcohol to clean rollers.

During the process, I found two tiny pieces of plasitic that were lodged in places they didn't belong and thought "Thank God! This has to be the issue."

I have toner all over me, my office, the outside of the printer, and in my small vac. I turned the printer back on and booted it up and it still does not want to work. So far, I have removed four paper jams and rebooted the printer three times.

If I can't get it to print tonight, I will have to take the file to a copy shop tomorrow and pay $1 a sheet for them to print it out for me -- since it's in color.

Toner isn't the only thing I'm up to my eyebrown in tonight.