samizdat
low-budget high-volume printing. because fuck the system.
so you have written "the missing text" the world has been waiting for, and now you want to print it a million times, but you have a low budget? well... at least that is my situation.
challenges
chipless toner and drums
i chose Brother as manufacturer, because Brother toner and drums are chipless, so Brother-compatible toner and drums are cheap. all other manufacturers (HP, Samsung, Canon, Konica Minolta, ...) have chips in their toner and drums, so toner and drums are expensive.
overheating and vertical creases
one issue i had was that my printers were overheating.
the symptom of this issue was: all my printers produced vertical creases in the paper, so the toner on the backsides was not fixated.
i asked Brother support, but they had no clue, except "youre using wrong paper" or "you should use genuine Brother toner and drums".
then i added ventilators behind my printers to push the hot air away from the printers, and voila, the "vertical creases issue" was gone.
blaming overheating makes sense, because my printers are packed in a tight space in my bathroom, close to the wall, so the hot air stays around the printers.
ventilators:
- small 15cm clip ventilator
- Clipventilator Taifun, 15watt, 15eur https://pflanzburg.de/product/clipventilator-taifun/
- Clipventilator Garden Highpro, 5watt, 20eur https://pflanzburg.de/product/garden-highpro-clipfan/
- https://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_nkw=clip+ventilator
- large 30cm 40watt desktop ventilator
- SILVERCREST good STV 30 A1, 40watt, 20eur https://www.lidl.de/p/silvercrest-tischventilator-good-stv-30-a1-oszillierend/p100347429
maybe smaller ventilators like 120mm computer fans work too, this depends on your printer's location.
also, i added a tube ventilator to remove hot air from my printer room. otherwise, the room heats up after a few minutes, and the printers start overheating.
tube ventilators:
- PrimaKlima PK 160-2, 160mm, 420/800cbm/h, 100eur
- https://pflanzburg.de/product/rohrluefter-primaklima-ac-2-stufig/
- this model is rather oversized for this use case, but it works
handling high volume of toner and drums
the cheap "compatible" toner and drums are not accepted by recycling services
so either you produce large amounts of electronic waste or you find a way to refill toner and drums
printers
Brother HL-L5100DN
currently, i have 6x Brother HL-L5100DN printers running in parallel.
new price: 150eur
used price: 50-120eur
pro:
- cheap
- small, light (about 10kg)
con:
- slow duplex: about half of simplex speed
- small tray 1 with 250 sheets
Brother HL-L6400DW
Brother HL-L6400DW is an alternative to Brother HL-L5100DN
pro:
- larger tray 1 with 500 sheets
- uses same toner and drums
con:
- more expensive
- larger, heavier
Konica Minolta Bizhub 4700P
pro:
- fast duplex: about 80% of simplex speed
con:
- expensive
- toner and drums have chips, so more expensive