Slight squeak when printer starts

[230RN]

Brother HL-L2320D series

Really good service but it's emitting a slight double squeak on picking up the first sheet of a print job.  Then it goes away.  Not bad, but I want to catch it before badness happens.

On the other hand, I'm not ready to really get into it.

So, can somebody suggest the most likely place to lube it?  It doesn't happen all the time and of course intermittent problems are the worst kind. And if it's in the paper tray, obviously I can't listen for it with the tray open.

[lee n. field]

Brother HL-L2320D series

Really good service but it's emitting a slight double squeak on picking up the first sheet of a print job.  Then it goes away.  Not bad, but I want to catch it before badness happens.

Pickup rollers, likely.  How many rounds sheets through it?

On higher end printers, those are replaced on a schedule.  For something like that Brother, I doubt you could even get the part.  If it's the roller, you might be able to refresh the rubber surface.

[MillCreek]

^^^What would one use to refresh the rubber surface in an application like this?

[Brad Johnson]

They can be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol. That only removes surface crud, though.

Rollers harden over time and there's not much you can do other than replace them. Roller kits are available for higher-end printers. For most consumer-level stuff a failed roller equals new printer.

Brad

[Hawkmoon]

There are products available to treat older rollers to extend the life. The ones I see on-line now are aerosols but a few years ago I bought a small bottle of magic liquid that came in a needle oiler bottle. I put a small amount on a Q-Tip and used that to reach into the machine and daub the rubber rollers. It worked. It needs to be repeated about once a year, but the interval might be longer (or shorter) if that machine saw more use.

[Ben]

Just do what I do when I hear noises in my car - turn up the radio. 

[MillCreek]

They can be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol. That only removes surface crud, though.

I remember back in the day using isopropyl alcohol to clean rollers and heads of tape recorders and VCRs.

[lee n. field]

Just do what I do when I hear noises in my car - turn up the radio. 

Yeah, really.

A couple months back our printer guy at work gave me a nice recent HP Laserjet something.  (Mono laser, printer only, I forget the model.  Decent printer, $4-500 printer.)   Customer wanted it gone.  "It's noisy."   Sounds just fine to me.

[lee n. field]

They can be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol. That only removes surface crud, though.

Rollers harden over time and there's not much you can do other than replace them. Roller kits are available for higher-end printers. For most consumer-level stuff a failed roller equals new printer.

Brad

They also wear, quite apart from crud build up.  The old LJ 4Si printers I would work on, with enough wear the rollers would get shiny.  Of course those were cheap, a couple bucks each, replaced 3 rollers for each tray, which took seconds to do.  I think the recommended replacement interval was 100000 copies on the rollers.

[fifth_column]

There's a product in professional printing called blanket cleaner or blanket wash that can be used for cleaning rollers.

[230RN]

This was supposed to have been posted above at 12:52PM but ended up on Ben's concrete block thread.

So, just for the sake of completion in my own mind...

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Hmmm.  

I guess I've run five or six "reams" (500 sheets) of paper through it, and gone through three of the small TN-630 toner cartridges.  I'm guessing at this, mind you.

I was hoping to not have to start dismantling it to get to the problem.

I think what I'll do is wipe down what rollers I can get to conveniently (where do you get isopropyl alcohol anymore?) and dress them with a little bow rosin.  I had good luck using a tiny bit of rosin when refurbishing tape recorder belts and rollers back in the days when mechanical motion was required to record sounds and pictures.

I guess pitcher's rosin would do, too.

So thanks for pointing out the most probable source of the noise.

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Let that be my worst mistake of the month.