Printer Question

[Craig831]

Hi all,

I have a question about my printer and hope someone here can help me.

I have a Brother MFC-8300 laser printer. It's a great printer for the price (12PPM for $349) but when I print, my lights flicker. I have had the printer plugged directly into the wall, plugged into a cheap surge protector, plugged into a nice APC surge protector, and finally plugged into an APC Back-UPS ES 500.

Every time I print something, while the printer warms up, my lights in my house flicker. I also have an HP LaserJet 3330 which works fine when I print. It's connected to my work PC, though, so I am not printing to it from my other machines. I work from home so both printers are in the same room but I have problems printing to the HP from other printers since I connect to work via a VPN.

Anyway, back to the Brother printer. It dims the lights and, recently, I noticed when I am talking on my cordless phone, it will disconnect the phone as well.

Can someone please tell me what the problem is and if there is a solution? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Craig

[wju425]

Is the power supply separate from the printer? I would suspect the power supply. Either it's not the right one or defective.

\o/ Billy

[Craig831]

Well, the power cord goes into the back of the printer so I assume the power supply is attached...

[wju425]

That's going to make it harder since the power supply are intergrated with the printer. Something in there is drawing too much power. If it's under warranty I'd take it back. If it's not then it would be time to visit a repair shop.

\o/ Billy

[Xeroid]

You might have your room electrical circuit overloaded. Look on the back of the printer and see how many amps it draws. Most room outlet circuits are rated for 15 amps. The room is probably all on one circuit and if you have a lot of other stuff drawing power at the same time it could be causing the voltage to sag.

Most of the xerographic printers that I work on are rated to draw 12 amps. A 12 amp printer should be on a 15 amp circuit by itself IMHO.

Mike

[Craig831]

According to the badge on the printer, it's rated at 7.8 amps.

This is exactly what it said...

120V~50/60Hz 7.8A

I've had this printer since 1999 and have only had this problem since moving into this house last year. Maybe it's a matter of taking a closer look and seeing if the power supply can be replaced.

Thanks for the help, guys.

[butch81385]

i think that it is just that you have too much on one circuit in the house.. that would explain why it only happened since the move