Troubleshooting Banding in Laser Printers
Banding is a term used to describe the horizontal lines that sometimes appear in laser printer documents. As a rule of thumb the printer should be cleaned regularly as toner particles can build up and cause minor problems. Banding may occur regularly or when more complex or large documents are printed but the problem almost always lies with the printer and not any of the software. If you have recently purchased or started to use new paper that may be the problem. Inexpensive paper can cause minor or barley noticeable banding worse or it can be the cause of it entirely. Change back to the previously used paper to determine if this is the problem.
An example of banding in a laser printed document.
Next look to be sure the printer is set to the correct paper type; although auto paper detect is becoming more common most users do not have that function. You will need to look for the printer utility which is located under “print” in the “file” menu of the program from which you are trying to print. The printer dialogue box will be brought to display and you will need to find the “properties” or “setup” button; this will vary from vendor to vendor. You should see a list of different printer options now including the paper type option. You may need to look for it as every printer’s utility is a bit different. Select the correct paper type such as “photo paper” for a photo print.
While using the printer utility take note of other settings that could help. Say you only notice banding on full page full color graphics; you could set the utility to apply specific parameters to alleviate this on these particular files and documents. This will take some time and calibrating to get the desired result but will save your workgroup or office on paper costs. Again the settings are going to be different on each company’s printers but the features are generally universal.
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