Printer Noise

BrianS · Post by **BrianS** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 11:15 am

Hi All,

Is anyone interested in printer noise and if so what forum should this go into? A new one?

I saw some reviews on the site last summer on printer noise.

It would be great to have a place where we can give our experience (noise wise) with printers we use to aid others in selecting printers.

I would like to list model number and experience (quiet vs noisy in sleep standbye and operation) somewhere.

Cheers
Brian

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 1:03 pm

I just did a search for quiet printers and most of the threads are in the "Silent Front" forum so I'm going to move this one there.

My 2Â¢: Most of the newer Canon printers (i550, i560, i850, i960 etc) are very quiet while printing.

Dos_Junkie · Post by **Dos_Junkie** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 1:34 pm

it's not really silencing a printer, but putting it in a cabinet works really well.

rtsai · Post by **rtsai** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 2:45 pm

I have a Brother HL-1440 laser printer. It's noisy when printing (I guess as can be expected; maybe I'm too easy?). What disappoints me is that when it's done printing my few pages and waiting to go back to standby mode (which is silent), the fan and other associated machinery is really really loud.

Swapping a fan in a computer case is one thing (for my n00bness), but opening up a laser printer? I don't think so ...

mczak · Post by **mczak** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 3:50 pm

rtsai wrote:I have a Brother HL-1440 laser printer. It's noisy when printing (I guess as can be expected; maybe I'm too easy?). What disappoints me is that when it's done printing my few pages and waiting to go back to standby mode (which is silent), the fan and other associated machinery is really really loud.

Laser printer typically have 3 power modes; active (printing), standby, power save. After printing, they go to standby - in this mode, they still need around 80W or so to keep the fuser (needs around 200 degrees centigrade when printing) warm. They do this so if you print again you don't have to wait the 40s or so (the time it takes if you start a print job when the printer is in power-save mode) again to get the fuser heated.
However, there exist some laser printers which do not have separate standby and power save modes. They do not use a conventional heating coil, but use induction to heat the fuser - much faster, no preheating required. They should not generate noise after printing (not sure though, there might be other reasons noise is generated apart from fuser heating), and they are also much faster when printing a page out of power-save mode. At least some HP/Canon lasers use this principle (btw all HP lasers use print engines from Canon), HP markets that as "Instant-On fuser". There might be others, not sure.

scalar · Post by **scalar** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 6:07 pm

The thermal management of printers and copiers sucks in general, and it's all because of the fusing system.

If the printer can do 50 pages per minute, that fuser needs to be very hot to heat up that much toner.

Meanwhile you may have noticed that the printer/copier is made out of plastic. A 250+F degree 11-inch wide section of the machine is not exactly compatible with that nice fancy plastic cover on the outside.

Apparantly the concept of fiberglass insulation has not occurred to printer/copier makers, so instead they use fans to form a cool-air curtain between the very hot fuser and the rest of the printer.

This is why the monster office copiers running full-bore make so much whirring, whooshing noise.. there's a major wind-tunnel effect going on to keep the superhot fuser from turning the rest of the system into slag.

-Scalar

Elixer · Post by **Elixer** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 6:58 pm

I have an HP Laserjet 1012 that I bought off newegg. It is totally fanless, quiet while printing, and totally silent while not. For < $200 it is a very good value for a laser printer. I've heard though that after it has printed for ~5 mins it gets too hot inside and then it slows down to about 5 pages per minute as oppesed to its normal 15. I've never noticed this because it is very rare for me to print more than 10 pages consecutively.

mczak · Post by **mczak** » Sun Aug 15, 2004 3:51 pm

Elixer wrote:I have an HP Laserjet 1012 that I bought off newegg. It is totally fanless, quiet while printing, and totally silent while not.

So my theory about instant-on-fusers seems to be correct. In fact, most HP/Canon printers seem to use that nowadays.