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