My printer is acting similarly to the image below, what do you guys think is the problem?

Printer Model: Brother HL6180DW Laser Printer

Thanks in advance.

 

If the output on yours is similar it probably needs a bit of a cleaning - fuser and/or drum roller. Have you tried replacing the toner cartridge though?

 

bump

 

That's a good start for me. I'll try cleaning that out. Honestly, just hope it doesn't require Fuser replacement.

The toner is relatively new, I doubt that's the problem.

 

At my ex-job this was just drum roller issue, pure alcohol for cleansing(for the printer, not for drummers ;) ) and the problem was gone

 

Toner cartridges will never cause that issue unless the toner and drum are the same cartridge as in most HP laser printers. For your Brother printer, they are separate units.
To troubleshoot print quality defects:
Closely inspect the drum to see if there is any toner left on it similar to the print artifacts on the page. If so, you likely need a new drum unit. Cleaning it off will only help temporarily as the actual problem is the drum cleaning blade not scraping off residual toner. Cleaning blades are seldom replaceable in these drum units. Precision Roller has a remanufactured drum unit for your machine at roughly $20.
One way to see if it's the drum or the fuser is to do a "stop print" where you open a door on the printer while it is halfway through a print. If the page is clear until it hits the fuser, then it's likely the fuser.
Sometimes, you can get the fixing film much cheaper than a whole fusing unit. Usually when the fuser is causing defects, it's because the Teflon coated fixing film is either damaged (frayed), or the Teflon has worn off. Precision Roller has your fuser at $259.
My opinion looking at that sheet is defective fuser based on the repetitive image defects. You'll likely find two discolored lines on the fixing film/heat roller. However that's not from your printer if I understand correctly.
If you'll run a print off of yours and post a picture of that, I can probably tell you what it is by looking at it.
Seems like the fuser usually dies on that model around 40,000 pages.

 

@Legotron @naitguy , I cleaned the drum, right after cleaning the fuser (as @digitaldragon suggested), it seemed to improve things. So, I did a few test prints, re-cleaned the drum twice with %91 Isopropyl Alc, and from there on, nothing changed for the better; no matter how much I cleaned, these spots remained. Thank you guys for the suggestions, so far it seems to be working, but shall we dig deeper?

What else do you guys think I should do?

The drum has 28099 pages remaining, the fuser has 68447 remaining, and cartridge has %99 remaining.

Does any of the below help?

 

have you tried yelling at it in a firm disapproving voice?

 

maybe the piece did get braced over time....

 

Still looks like fuser repeat to me. Cleaning will get the toner off, but as the Teflon coating is likely worn off, the eggs will still stick to the pan, meaning it will only build up again.
The really definitive way to tell is to do the stop print and see if the defect is there before the page hits the fuser. In some printers, this isn't possible as there's not much distance between the output of the drum/transfer and the entrance to the fuser.
In my looking around for this model, those fusers seldom make it to the advertised page count. Page count isn't really the best way to measure fuser wear, rotation should be used as the fuser will still rotate when not printing to keep itself up to temperature. If you idle the printer a lot and don't print, that could be why it didn't make the advertised mileage (page count). My printer stays turned off until I am actually printing something.
If you're handy with mechanical things, you may be able to find a new heat roller on the cheap somewhere and just replace that.
You never said if you noticed wear on the heat roller of the fuser...

 

I had printers too. All crap. Solved like that: threw that bitch out straight to the garbage and never touched a printer again.

 

My bad. So, I just did a test, stopped the printer where the paper had just passed the drum and hadn't reached the fuser, and it turns out it is the drum that's the issue! it had left multiple streaks, and spots on the paper!

Now, it seems that cleaning the drum has somewhat improved the job, I'm gonna give cleaning it another go. Ultimately, replacing the drum will solve the issue.

As far as the fuser goes, upon cleaning the fuser, I didn't see any obvious sign of wear, there was creases on the pressure roller, but I found out that to be normal.

Do you think there could be anything done about the drum? I hate to throw this practically new thing away .

 

Most of the time with printer issues, is an hard reset.

 

Good that you did the stop print. It really tells you exactly where the problem is.
Yes, the pressure roller may have a wrinkled appearance. This is considered normal.
There's not usually a lot to do to the printer drum units. They're manufactured to be replaced, not repaired. If you are able to take it apart, you may be able to further clean out the toner recycling area behind the cleaning blade (a rubber blade like a squeegee), toner will sometimes get impacted in there and the normal recycle augers can't move it anymore. Normally, when you have problems with cleaning blades, they come back after manually cleaning them.
I see a replacement drum unit here on Precision Roller for $20. It's not OEM, but would likely work well for you.
https://www.precisionroller.com/drum-units-for-brother-hl-6180dw/products.html

 

Greta Thunberg and all the green political parties should have stood for the waste of plastic about products like printers instead of manifesting to replace plastic bags from supermarkets.
Basically almost every ink printers (not the case of the OP) are prone to become garbage quickly but lasers are not far from this, too.
I have a very good, firmly made Epson mono laser printer with ethernet, waiting for being thrown to garbage because of the same issue. You can try to clean whatever part of the printer, in my case I managed to solve the issue temporarily for a few times but the problem always reappeared soon.
And why don't I replace the drum? because it costs a new printer.
I have never ever bought one with cartridge excluding the drum again.
I can buy cheap third-party cartridges and if there's an issue, just replace that, instead of being forced to buy a new printer. Actually, I buy them at a specialist who replace it with no charge if there is an issue.

 

We're in need of some help -- we are running several E3D Revo Hemera XS's and Revo Hemera's on CR10S Pro v2's. They have E3D hotends with Creality heating cartridges and themisters. All the voltages are matching (24v). We have PEI flexible beds -- no heat and no warping.

We're currently printing large manufacturing orders of 300+. The files have printed repeatedly without issue . All the files are printing Nylon 6 + 15% Carbon Fiber or Glass fill at around 265 C.

Suddenly, all failed, over the span of a week in the exact same way.

The failure looks like this -- the extruder creates a messy, stringy, or under extruded layer then stops extruding but the print and head keeps going. The extruder normally has the tiniest bit of filament at its tip, occasionally, it becomes messy. Temperature doesn't fluctuate, or so it seems. The gears never seize and continue to spin. The filament pulls out and looks somewhat normal. Afterwards, we push filament through at around 275 C to clear it out and try again.

Since we ran nearly 280+ prints without issue off the same slices, we're looking for physical issues, not something like retraction or pathing or fan settings in the slice.


We have made several attempts at fixing with no real progress --

-Cleaning Extruder and gears: The gears all look pretty clean except for some dust which we've cleared out. No cracks or rusting. Fan seems to be in working order and on in the right direction. May have been good but didn't show a major improvement either way.

-Removing Bowden tube: We run off a constant dryer as our custom Nylon blends are very susceptible to moisture. Removing the tube wasn't a fix and there wasn't enough force pulling opposite to create any jam.

-Printing lower temperature (260): Print looked fine but we got a few under extruded lines (missing lines) and this caused the same effect. Printing hotter didn't do much either. Also, when we're watching it, the temperature doesn't jump much at all, maybe +/- 2 C. Didn't calibrate PID or esteps but also don't think that's an issue (unless others disagree)

-Tightening the tensioner. We went from almost all the way loose to all the way tight, neither seems to affect much.

-Heat creep: I'd be shocked if it were heat creep as our heater block is 6-7 mm away from the extruder gears. We didn't add any thermal paste though after we pull the filament, its not a stringy mess. Also, why now as we get into colder months??


Any help is appreciated as we are completely shut down, losing 7 printers all at once and grinding our manufacturing operations to a halt. (We'll offer a 10% off coupon to anybody who helps haha!)

 

Sorry, but I probably wouldn't be much help with 3d printing issues. Looking at this from a troubleshooting standpoint though, it would seem to be environmental as all printers stopped functioning correctly at roughly the same time. I'd be looking at whatever is common to all the devices such as power (is the power clean, brownouts can damage sensitive electronics), etc. Are they located in a climate controlled area where temperature and humidity are kept constant? Things like that. Also were there any changes/revisions to the devices (firmware upgrades) or the source 3d files themselves. Good luck, seems like you've done some in depth testing already.