HP's LaserJet product line debuted in 1984 with a $3,500 model that printed eight pages per minute using a toner cartridge with a 3,000-page yield. When your modern-day office LaserJet starts putting out pages that smear when you touch them, focus your troubleshooting on the printing components and consumables that contribute directly to the flawed sheets you find in the output tray.
Toner blends pigment and finely ground plastic into a powder that forms a heat-set bond with paper. Toner formulations vary by machine and manufacturer. Although new cartridges typically contain toner with the right fusing properties for the printer they target, remanufactured cartridges could be refilled with material that requires a higher fusing temperature than your LaserJet develops. Under those conditions, toner can't bond correctly, which makes it smear and wipe off. To correct the problem, try another toner cartridge.
Your LaserJet's fuser provides the heat source that sets toner to paper in a virtually permanent bond. If the fuser doesn't develop the proper temperature to complete that bonding process, the result resembles what you see if you accidentally introduce the wrong toner into your printer. Fuser problems can stem from component failures, use of improperly remanufactured parts or improper setup following a repair. Some failures may trigger a warning message on the printer's front panel, based on the machine's detection of the fuser's inability to reach proper temperature, but others simply result in blotchy, smeared toner. These problems call for a technician's assistance.
Too-thick or too-smooth paper, or sheets with a heavy surface texture, can limit your LaserJet's ability to fuse toner onto your chosen media. Your user guide states the recommended range of thicknesses that fall within your printer's paper-handling capacity. Paper that exceeds this range may be unable to move smoothly through the sometimes-complex twists and turns of the printing path inside the device, which likewise limits the fuser's function. Heavily-textured sheets present a surface too complex for the fuser's heat to reach into low and high points of the design. Conversely, the too-smooth surface of glossy sheets also inhibits a proper toner bond. Replace your output media and try again.
Smears that appear in addition to otherwise well-formed output may signal toner contamination inside your LaserJet, either from a leaky cartridge or from improperly fused sheets that leave toner residue behind. Smears at the edge of the sheet that enters the printer first point to dirty paper guides. Although you can follow your user guide's directions for basic cleaning inside the printer, any cleanup that requires disassembly should be left to experts who know how to handle the laser and heat sources these devices contain.
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