Leaking Printer - Brother MFC 640CW

Swanseajack

Evening all, I have a Brother printer, model number as above, a combination printer, fax and scanner. It's always worked fine and without doubt has given good service over the years and has worked hard and long. When I got up this morning I was horrified to see that it looked like the machine had been leaking black ink - all over my lovely desk. I kind of assumed there was a problem with the cartridge but I don't think there is. The machine has been printing fine, right up until last night. I suspect the 'leak' has been there for a few days and I just didn't notice as paperwork was covering the side of the machine. It has now been suggested to me by the cartridge people that the waste ink absorber pad is saturated and leaking out. I had no idea there was such a thing! Does anybody have a similar experience? Is there a cure? I do hope so.....thanks for any assistance/suggestions. Cheers, Jack

onzey

Google with your model number and try and find instructions to dismantle it and wring out the waste ink absorber if you feel up to it. You'll need gloves of some sort to avoid very inky hands I believe.

Normally I think you get an error before such leakage which stops the printer being used anymore so most people just buy another printer probably. I don't know exactly how the error is triggered but do some research on it (and how to get rid of it) if you do fix the printer, otherwise a little later down the line it might pop up and prevent you using your recently serviced printer.

My own experience with my Brother DCP-340CW happened a while back so memory is a bit vague on it. I believe I got the error and researched it to discover it meant the absorber was supposedly near saturation. I found instructions online to fix it and partially dismantled but I didn't actually wring out the absorber in the end as I had no gloves and was short on time and it wasn't actually leaking out. I put it back together and cleared the error somehow (can't remember how) and have been meaning to do the job properly ever since or end up one day with leaking ink like yourself.
I don't really print that much and so far it's carried on as normal. In fact, it's been the best printer I've had.

Swanseajack

Hi, many thanks for your help, that is all really useful stuff. I'll get on to looking for the manual online, hopefully I'll be able to find out how to take it apart to source the pad - I bought 2 pairs of rubber gloves today in readiness!
Cheers, I'll post again with how I get on, fingers crossed!!! Jack

onzey

There is the possibility of course that the problem is not the absorber so double check it's not a simple cartridge problem.
Perhaps it was doing a cleaning cycle and maybe the print head didn't move correctly and dumped ink on your desk instead of the absorber. I'm just saying there could be other possibilities. Perhaps put something underneath and print a few pages in case it was a one off glitch.

I found a service manual here

Section 5.1.14 shows the absorber box (and how to reset purge counter) so you need to read through to see how to get to it. If you can get a new one I suppose that is preferable to messing about with the old one. If using the old one, I don't know if washing it is best or just trying to squeeze as much ink out as possible. You might find some advice on the fixyourownprinter.com website or maybe post there.

Good luck if you do it. Don't blame me if you end up with a totally useless printer.


Edit: That link doesn't work. Try this

http://manuais.portpress.com.br:8092/mypages/Brother/DCP340cw_MFC640cw_820cw/Manuais+T!cnicos/MFC640CW+Service.pdf

Might take a while to load.

interstellaflyer

This is quite an old printer, it could be the absorbtion strip/ink well is full, some machines are set to stop when this happens, however not all, so I'm not sure if this is the case with your machine. Are you using original cartridges or compatibles? OEM cartridges have a ball valve in the cartridge so it seals when you remove the cartridge, preventing surplus ink being spilt (cartridges are never completely empty) compatible cartridges generally have a plastic membrane that punctures when you insert the cartridges, these do not seal when you take the cartridge out so it is quite common to get some loose ink inside the machine, which will build up over time, however, my guess is that the ink well is full, also bear in mind that all the inks mixed together will make black.