laser printer causes lights to flicker

[arubahounds]

Bought a Brother HL-1440 laser printer. It causes the lamps in the room flicker while it's powering up. After the initial warmup, the flicker is intermittent. It quickly powers down and there is no further flicker until it powers back up to print.

The flicker is only inside the room with the laser, not in any adjacent rooms. When the lights flicker, there isn't any apparent effect to other equipment in the room.

I initially had the printer connected to a surge protector, then switched it direct to the wall outlet. It shares the outlet with the surge protector in which one of the lamps is plugged. Another lamp is plugged into a separate outlet in the same room, and it flickers as well.

I guess there is some sort of voltage sag caused by the printer. Does this mean that there is something wrong with my wiring, or with the printer? The power cord does not have a transformer on it - should it have? Would a UPS or isolation transformer solve the problem?

Thanks as always.

HT

[Force Flow]

Wow. That's wierd.

How old is the wiring in your home?

[morriswindgate]

Laser printers use a lot of power when they heat up. It is a pretty good idea to put it on a seperate power strip and outlet.

[arubahounds]

force flow - the wiring is about 25 year old.

Morris - I tried a separate strip and outlet. The whole room must be on one circuit. The lamps dim even though they are plugged into different outlets.

[bailey]

thats your problem, too much load, and too light of wire,
you need to consider some serious electrical changes and or rewireing the location before any real damage in done.

[arubahounds]

The thing is, I've got a lot of equipment in this room. Sometimes its all turned on at once: 2 pc's, 2 sets of speakers, scanner, 2 monitors, two inkjet printers, two lamps, router, cable modem and a treadmill (the last one's not turned on as often as it should be). But nothing made the lights dim until I added the laser printer. In fact, the printer makes them dim even if nothing else in the room is turned on.

Is it possible that the printer uses more voltage than everything else in the room put together?

[glc]

Lasers are notorious for sucking up a huge amount of juice when they fire off - that's why you should never plug it into a battery backup UPS unit, it will bring it to its knees.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Mine makes my monitor flicker.

[Harry]

Can't he get some kind of power adapter. Like remember those old HP deskjets that came with those power down 20 watt adapters. Wouldn't the printer work fine without sucking that 500 or is it 600 watts of power through it.

[Tuf]

I don't think they would get warm enough to melt the toner on twenty watts. I suppose they could make it heat up slower and lessen the peak draw somewhat. But the time to get your first page out would incrrease.

[Larry E.]

Had the same problem at work with a copy machine. Didn't know at first what was causing the lights to fliker. Called in the electricians to check the problem, they put there meters on the circuit to check the load and found that every minute or so there was a heavy load of about 10 amps for a very short duration. The load only lasted less than half a second but caused all the lights in the room to fliker. This only happened when the copyer was in power saving mode. Our fix was to leave it off of power save, it uses a lot more power but the lights don't blink. I don't pay the power bill so were happy.

Larry E.

[Iman74]

I think it's a bit harsh to say this will cause damage. What I do know (and it's not a lot) is that devices, PC's, printers, treadmills pull a lot of juice. This effects other equipment. Hell sometimes when we open the garage doors the ups beep for a second. The thing is that you should be concern with one thing; will this cause a fire. My educated opinion, I would say no. But if it's really a concern you won't know the facts until you have an electrician look at it. Now my sister is dating one and we described a similar problem that we are having to him. To shorten his response, what he informed us is that there shouldn't be a worry about fire, but the more we add to the outlets the more electricty draw we are going to see. If it's really an issue and a concern electricians aren't cheap but hey atleast you get piece of mind once he or she informs you of the problem.

[bailey]

any time you use more power than the circut was designed for, you creat heat, heat creates fire,

what do you think.

[arubahounds]

Thanks everyone for your responses.

I know next to nothing about electricity but this particular printer has a power rating of 7.8 amps. Similar printers from HP are rated between 3 and 5 amps. I'm guessing that this printer uses more power to function than others do, and probably more power than any other equipment I have.

I have a friendly neighborhood electrician. I'll report back with his diagnosis.

HT

[Jomama]

Inkjets dont use much power but lasers do. Typically the heat lamp is about 800 watts. Thats about 8 amps by itself. (watts = volts x amps) Add more for motors firing up to initialize. If you have a breaker box, maybe you could run a separate circuit to your play room. I would suggest a 20 breaker using #12 gauge wire.
I have two circuits in my computer room, one on each side of the room. but that is just me.

[Iman74]

Originally posted by bailey what do you think.

I try not to.

[shazam]

Chance are a 25 year old home has a 15 amp circuit.Low voltage is just as bad as high voltage. It could in some cases cause a fire. You need to get someone to test for amps while every thing is on. Chances are that you are on a 15 amp ciruit.If your printer draws 7.8 amps on 15 amp breaker with every thing else is pushing it. But there many other thing that could cause your problem. to name a few A loose connection,recepticale 25 yrs old by be bad they get to a point where you have to widen the prongs on cord to get a tight fit a breaker going bad. 25 years ago the use aluminum wire ( I hope not in your case). When was the last time some one tightened all the screws in your breaker panel. They do loosen over the years.It is worth the price to get a good quallifide electrition to check it out. It maybe just a simple thing as a loose wire in panel box. I have seen this many times.

[arubahounds]

Got the diagnosis. I have a 15 amp circuit. The circuit covers my computer room and the garage. Even though my power draw is about 9.5 amps the lights still flicker when the printer draws power for the fuser.

Apparently the solution is to live with it (it's not a dangerous situation) or get a separate circuit. The electrician's going to run 2 more circuits into the room so I can have the computer, the printer and the lights all on separate circuits.

Voila! Another problem solved as I bid bon voyage to 200 bucks.

[CaptTuna]

When I finally got serious about my equipment. I added a separate 20 amp circuit for my computers. It is not the cheapest solution, but it works.

[Jomama]

It is not the cheapest solution, but it works.

But it is probably the best solution.