[bruce]

My old HP laserjet printer produces grainy prints. I was told that I damaged the roller over time by doing manual 2-sided prints to save paper. I am now using a Canon iP3500 inkjet printer, provided free with the purchase of a macbook air. Will I, over time, damage this inkjet printer by manually doing 2-sided prints?

[curiousuburb]

Ink density and paper quality will probably have more impact than anything else. Laser and inkjet are different tech obviously, and the 'fixing' method differs

Too much ink on cheap paper (which doesn't dry) or re-running still-hot laser prints might conceivably foul the rollers, but it is hard to imagine ink buildup on rubber/plastic doing much damage if you're patient.

I have seen people bork printers by throwing transparency film through repeated laser passes until it melts inside the machine... but that's probably user stupidity as much as material failure.

Is paper that expensive, or are you habitually wasting it by failing to preview properly prior to needless printing?

Print as PDF is your friend. Recycle your electrons first before you plow through unnecessary trees.

[bruce]

The laser printer was 15 years old, so that was perhaps the problem. I am pretty careful with how I print so I do not think the laser roller was ruined that way. But the laser process involves more heat, so perhaps if I print on the inkjet after the paper dries I will not hurt the roller. At least, this is my hope.

[DMBand0026]

You got 15 years of life out of a printer...that's not bad at all. Ideally we'd all like our stuff to last forever, and it's not out of the question that at laser would last 15 years, but I'd just move on with life at this point. It seems to me that there's little sense in sinking money in to repairing the thing or lamenting its loss considering you got a lot of life out of the thing.

I doubt that sending paper through twice was the demise of that printer.

[Robo]

Yeah, it sounds like you handle your printers with care. I wouldn't at all worry about it. If my new printer lasted me 15 years, I'd be ecstatic. I'm sure that's above and beyond the expected design life of the machine. Sometimes things just break, especially things with lots of moving mechanical parts.

I would replace that inkjet with another laser printer, though. You can get a good Brother laser printer for under $100. You'd easily save that money with the difference of ink and toner over the next fifteen years

[tsa]

I had a printer for about that long. When a printer is that old the rollers will be dried out, resulting in bad paper handling. With printers as ridiculously cheap as they are, repairing is not an option.

[thegeriatric]

15 years old, sounds like it died of old age.