Troubleshooter

In the case of a Lexmark printer, a consistent dot running down the same area of the page would almost certainly be caused by a small amount of glue or some other foreign material being present on the circular drum roller that is either part of the toner cartridge or part of a seperate drum unit.  Before proceeding we need to establish which type of printer you own.

 

A printer which takes a toner cartridge which has an integrated drum will have a cylindrical roller on the cartridge such as in the picture below:

A printer which has a seperate drum unit can easily be identified as they have have a seperate green photoconductor and often the toner cartridges will be much more simplistic with just a simple hole from which the toner is dispensed from (such as in the image below)

If your printer has the drum on the cartridge then please remove the cartridge and if necessary gently pull back the protective plastic shield to espose the cyclindrical drum unit.  If your printer has a seperate drum unit then please simply remove the drum unit and keep the toner cartridge to one side.

The instructions will vary slightly from machine to machine but in order to resolve this problem we need to clean off the offending material which can be done in a way similar to the following method. 

1.Position a print sample above the drum unit.  This should allow you to locate the area of the drum which is causing the poor print.

2. Turn the drum unit gear by hand while looking at the surface of the drum.  Stop turning once you have found the offending mark.

3. Wipe the surface of the drum with a cotton swab until the mark, dust, glue or paper deposit on the surface of the drum comes off.  Reinstall the drum unit.

If the problem still persists please contact us to perform further troubleshooting.