Hilton Images, Inc.     Finest Quality Laser Sublimation Products

Drums, fusers and transfer kits are considered "consumables" by HP, meaning that they will need to be replaced at given intervals and they can be replaced by the printer user. No technician needed.

Although the printer will display "percentage of life remaining" on each of these, they all can fail completely, with little or no warning. It is high recommended to keep a backup of each in stock.

The drum is the unit in the upper drawer. It lifts out by the blue handle. The drum unit also contains the drum's cleaning blade and the waste toner bin. A failure on the cleaning blade will show up as line, streaks or smudges down the page. A full waste bin SHOULD trigger a message on the printer display advising you to change the drum, but could result in no message, just a dumping or scattering of loose toner over the page.

There are kits to rebuild drum units, but they involve cleaning out the waste bin and that can be very messy. Buying a professionally rebuilt drum unit can save you $30 to $40 but unless they have replaced the cleaning blade (wiper blade) with a new one, the unit will probably develop lines and streaks midway through its life.

The transfer kit is in the middle drawer. Sometimes a transfer kit can fail completely and cause the printer to start spitting out blank pages, and just keep ejecting blank page after blank page. This is usually around the 50% life remaining mark for the kit. If this happens the transfer kit has to be replaced.

The fuser is located in the back of the printer, and can be removed without any tools. The fuser can fail in a few different ways. The printer pages pass through the heated rollers of the fuser and the toner gets melted into the paper. When the teflon coating of the upper roller wears down it will start to pick up toner off the paper and then - on the next revolution - lay it down again. This produces a "ghost" image, repeating the same image about 3 inches down the page. The coating can also develop rips or tears and this will make a dirty streak down the page which may rub off to the touch, since it isn't fully fused into the paper.

Also, a fuser can develop a flat area on the roller which will make it THUMP every time it turns, getting pretty noisy.

The best deal we've found on drums and transfer kits is from www.hp.com. They also offer free overnight shipping. Fusers are available from them, with free overnight shipping, but quality rebuilt fusers can be found for considerably less.

Hilton Images has arrangements with "surplus" dealers to get low-priced HP drums, transfer kits and fusers, which are new in box, but usually have boxes which are somewhat beaten up. As an example we have new HP fusers for the 4500/4550, which retail for $279.95, which we're selling for $129.95. We can offer similar savings on drums and transfer kits, when we have them. Call for availability - 352-384-3707 or email, hiltonimages@aol.com.