After much research, I decided to get a Brother HL-1440 printer in late 2002. It was highly rated from both review sites and users, and was a very good price for a low end laser printer. I was very pleased when I first got it: it was fast and printed very crisp pages. This would soon change.
About a year after I had purchased it, I noticed a light gray image being printed on each page. I figured it just needed to be cleaned, but nothing seemed to fix the problem. A friend of mine who had the same printer mentioned he was having a similar problem with his. I started searching around online and quickly realized that this was a common issue. After several thousand pages (or even less), the drum on the printer would go bad.
The savy tech support crew at Brother let me know the only way to fix the problem was to replace the drum, which was actually more expensive than buying a new printer. Unfortunately, my printer had just gone out of warranty. I ended up buying a HP Laserjet 2300 which has worked well for me.
The printer sat in my closet for quite some time. I decided to try to fix the printer one last time:
My coworkers volunteered to help. We took the printer, and a complete system out to a remote desert location.
We decided to start small: Volquartsen .17 HMR
The results were a little disappointing. Besides a few holes in the case, the printer still didn't work.
We decided to try something different. Why not a hand-held? Maybe a Glock 26 Subcompact 9mm would do?
Ah, that's better. The printer still has issues, but the logo was shot off and the cartridge door was knocked open.
An AK-47 with armor piercing rounds is pretty powerful; let's use that.
The toner cartridge is sure feeling it. It also took a few nice chunks out of the front door.
The back has a few large holes in it now.
I wonder what a high-powered rifle will do? A .270 Winchester rifle should work well.
Mr. Printer is barfing his innards!
In one way, out the other...
It's shotgun time! Let's start with a Mossberg 500 using bird shot.
That did quite a bit of damage to the outer case.
Let's now try some buck shot in the shotgun.
I guess we're just not trying hard enough. Let's have a free for all.
The end result:
In the end, it looks like the printer isn't fixed. Even Pooh-bear is sad.
Although fun, shooting the printer with various weapons did not improve print quality on the Brother HL-1440 printer. I would recommend buying a different model of printer.