My Sharp copier prints blurry on top of the page

Sharp copiers are, as we’ve said in previous posts, one of the better ones in the market, and the best purchase you can make as a small-business owner.

This is a Multifunction printer-copier that works with long lasting toners. Almost all Sharp printer-copiers work with the same toner, of course, but we’re referring specifically to the Sharp AL-2040CS one. This is a high-yield device, the scanner is great and it’s also an excellent Multifunction printer-copier.

We recommend you visit Sharp’s official website to learn of any specifications on this same printer model, the one this entire post has been created for.

As we were saying, this printer has been having this exact problem. This link will allow you to see a picture on Google Docs of how the blurry-start-of-page problem looks like. Our pages were coming out exactly as the one shown in the picture, showing up in one of our work printers. We decided to address this issue from every possible angle: changing the cylinder and the toner, opening the printer from the back and observing the entire printing process.

We did anything and everything we knew had done to other printers in our workshop, but we were still missing the mark. Since this was our first time dealing with this problem, we took things slowly and decided to work on the printer every other day with the hope of finding a solution.

In the end, we’re all human beings and ignore some of the cases that may come our way. Solutions usually involve more than one person, since there’s always someone else who knows much more than us about certain aspects.

This next piece of information came to me when I posted a thread on yoreparo.com, a great blogging community where you can find a solution for almost any problem, no matter how big or small it is. We started this thread called “Sharp AL2040CS copies’ are very blurry in one end”, and many answers followed. In the beginning, people proposed the same fixes we’d tried in the past like changing the toner or checking the toner developer, which obviously didn’t answer us.

However, one person did provide us with an actual solution, which was:

“clearly your laser’s mirrors are dirty or the crown thread has torn.”

We didn’t understand all these terms, so we asked our helper what they meant. He showed a lot of confidence when explaining things to us, and made us feel certain of his answer. What he told us about this piece is the following:

"the thread or colotron unit is found inside the crown, which is located in the lateral gate on the right side of the printer."

One of its ends could be out of place: you may be able to see the slots it rests on. The machine will also have another crown, the loading one, but this one’s inside the cylinder. If you’ve already replaced the entire cylinder, then this second crown doesn’t have anything to do with the problem. Good luck and greetings!”

Then, we started looking for this same piece, the crown, and took advantage of the help we received. In the following picture, we’ll show you what the crown looks like.

Based on the information we got from our helper back at the yoreparo.com forum, we were able to locate the broken piece: it’s a small thread that can be seen in the inside of this other piece found on the gate. You can’t really appreciate it in the picture since it’s so fine, but it’s similar to a knitting thread.

We recommend you treat this filament very delicately, given the case it’s actually broken and you need to lay a new one in. In our case, it wasn’t completely broken, but our printer did have a torn piece.

sharp error solution

As we can see in the previous picture, the broken piece has already been replaced and everything looks great. Our situation was a bit more complicated, so here’s another picture of this piece’s former state.

As you can see, the part highlighted in red is broken right at the bracket. As days went by, this caused the crown thread we mentioned to tear just like this.

part image sharp problem solving

This left us with only one solution: replacing it for a new one. Luckily for us, we have a few printers that haven’t been in working conditions for a while, but that happened to have this exact piece in perfect shape. Therefore, we were able to replace this thread with a new one.

The fixed area of our copier looks like this:

this sharp piece where the filament

Everything will seem to work perfectly even when this problem is in full effect, so it could continue to damage important parts of the printer in the process. We recommend you fix this issue quickly in order to avoid bad news and bigger expenses.

problem solved at the end

Please keep in mind the information supplied in this document doesn’t belong to the printer’s manufacturer, but is based on on our personal experience as techs.

This technique has worked for us so we decided to share it. In case you know of any other solution, please post it in the comment section below.