How to solve the h4 subcode 00 error message on sharp AL-2030 copiers

Usually, this error message appears on sharp copiers when the fusers are overheating. When this happens, please adjust your printer’s position and separate it at least 50cm (20 inches) from any wall or border it may have been standing next to; leaving it in the same original position could cause some serious damage.

If you look at these copiers’ backside, most of them have ventilators where a small fan pushes all the hot air created by the fuser. This vapor comes directly from the fuser unit.

We recommend you keep your copier fresh and ventilated at all times. Even when they need a bit of heat to set the letters and pictures on paper, too much heat can compromise the head detectors and cause the h4-00 error message. Please keep in mind your printer could just say “h4” on screen, but that it’s usually accompanied by the 00 subcode.

You can see all the error codes by pressing the star key, the same one you push to make a copy on it. If you look this error code, please add the subcode as well, since some error messages have many different subcodes attached to it. This is the star copy on your printer.

start button on these printers

Now that you’ve identified the subcode and are made sure it’s actually the h4-00 error message, you may proceed to eradicating it from your copier. Please read this entire procedure attentively.

We also recommend you keep your printer on and displaying this error message. The first thing you must do is access your copier’s service mode.

Step #1:
First, press the clear key, which is marked with the c letter on the main screen. The next picture will show you exactly how it looks. Then, press the auto button twice; you can find it on the left side of the main screen. You can now look at the following image.

clear button

After pressing the clear button, press the auto one. Now please look at the next picture.

auto button

Remember you have to press these buttons consecutively two times times each, creating the following sequence: clear-auto-clear-auto.

Step #2:
The copier’s screen will now show you two different sets of numbers where you must indicate how many copies you want to have made, the screen will go completely black after this.

You will need to add one set of 10 copies and four sets of 1 to reach a total of 14 copies. After it’s done, press the star key as if you actually wanted those copies done. Please take a look at the following picture.

press as if to make about 14 copies

After pressing the star or green button, the screen will go black once more. You can now turn the copier off and on again, and this will have solved your issue. However, if things don’t go according to plan, please contact us by leaving a comment in the section below this post.

How to restore the cylinder on sharp AL-2030, AL-2040CS and AL-2050CS copiers

Traditionally, sharp copier cylinders yielded up to 15,000 copies. However, it seems the manufacturers no longer deem this amount of copies convenient, so they’re forcing us to change the cylinders much sooner than before.

As printer owners, we think these cylinders are extremely expensive, and we need to use the one we have until the very end to save some money and avoid buying a new one.

In order to do this, we must restore the cylinder in our copier to get 15,000 more copies out of it. This post was created to show you how to solve this problem step by step.

The cylinder replacement error message will show up on our sharp copier’s screen with this logo, telling us we need to change the one installed in it. The following procedure will show you how to eradicate this error code from all your sharp copiers.

Before you start, make sure the error is displayed on the copier’s screen. At some point during this procedure, the copier will stop showing the error message and remain in standby, but this is perfectly normal and you don’t have to worry about it.

Step #1:
First, put your sharp copier in service mode and proceed to restoring the cylinder. Now, press the clear button.

clear button

Step #2:
Please press the auto button immediately, located on the left side of the sharp copier’s main screen. Take a look at the following image.

auto button

Step #3:
Press the clear button one more time, and then press the auto one. The screen will now show you a few numbers where you must add the amount of copies you want made. Now you must ask the copier to make 24 copies, preferably adding two sets of 10 and four of 1 copies. You can see how to do this in the next picture.

say that prints about 24 pages

Step #4:
Then, press the star button. The numbers will appear again, so please ask your copier to make 7 copies this time. Once this has been done, press star again.

After you’re done with these steps, turn your printer off and on again. The cylinder must now be restored. If you have any problems solving this issue, please contact us.

You may also be interested in the service manual for sharp AL-2030, AL-2040CS7 and AL-2050CS copiers, which you can download by clicking on this link.

Here’s a brief summary of all these steps:
Clear-auto-clear-auto-24-star-07-star and restart. The star button is the one you use to copy a document.

How to contact us

First of all, thank you for entering our blog and trying to solve your ink and toner cartridges with our help. Unfortunately, we’re lacking a direct contact form to help you solve any specific problem.

We’re very grateful you want to contact us, and thank you so much for trusting the information we’ve shared here.

The only way you can contact us at the moment is by posting comments on our posts: we read them on a daily basis and are happy to answer back. We’ve also found this is the most effective method for finding a solution to any problem, since it remains on this blog. Other readers may be inspired by the results and created a more effective solution.
This is the proper way of writing a comment on our blog posts.

coment in en.rellenadodecartuchos

Things to keep in mind:

You must post your comments using a valid and verified profile or email account, as Blogger demands. In this way, you can receive a direct notification when your question has been answered. If you post an anonymous question, you won’t be able to receive one, so we recommend you follow Blogger’s instructions and use a valid account such as LiveJournal, Blogger, Wordpress and TypePAD.

Another way of being notified is by subscribing to the posts. Take into account you will get an email or profile notification each time a question or comment is added to the post you’re subscribed to. We suggest you choose this method until your question has been answered.

Subscribing to posts:

This is a very effective way of getting an answer from the editor of the post. We answer each and every comment because we think they’re more important than publishing a new entry on our blog, since they give us feedback from our readers and customers. In this way, we obtain more information can look for new solutions.

My Sharp AL-1361 Copier prints the sides of my pages very blurrily

Thank you all so much for showing interest in this particular solution! If you’re reading this, we’ve been working on a Sharp AL-1361 that’s been printing sides rather bleary.

We’ve already tried anything in our power, such as replacing the toner and the entire unit with new ones. We’ve tried working with both new pieces, as well as with one new and one used article. So far, we’ve had the exact same print quality issues. We’d be very greateful for your help.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9rztpEWNmezZzh1SFVsckFkYTg
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9rztpEWNmezZzh1SFVsckFkYTg.

Please explain this procedures in an easy way, so this solution can remain in yoreparo.com for othe users’ needs.

Solution to this problem:

Thank you all so much for collaborating on this particular issue and solving this case in a communal effort. This is clearly the best possible way of coming up with a solution, since some of you have knowledge in certain areas others ignore.

Obviously, whoever’s asking this question lacks the information necessary. Please be very specific about the terms you’re using, and thank you very much for the information you’re supplying.

Solution to this problem:

In order to solve this problem, we had to go all the way to the laser unit. This is the light that shines inside the scanner, the unit responsible for copying an image and turning it into text later on. The copier itself was in perfect shape regarding toner, toner developer, cylinder, etc.

However, the problem lied on the image it was actually receiving and copying. The copies didn’t come out properly because the printer wasn’t able to see the images well, all this due to a bit of filth that was getting in the way of the mirrors. The laser unit had to be dismounted entirely to clean each and every one of the mirrors inside it.

This process must be done with extreme care and using very delicate materials, since the mirrors are clearly very delicate.

Here is a picture of the mirrors you must clean inside the laser unit:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9rztpEWNmezMFU1VnhUMDA3aFU
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9rztpEWNmezMFU1VnhUMDA3aFU

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.