Brian Campbell36 said:It prints, but every time a page comes out, this little cloud of white smoke puffs out.
I don't get why it heats up so fast that it starts smoking. What could be going on? 🤔
So, basically, everyone kind of gave you the answer already:
The issue is the connection between room temperature, humidity, and paper quality. It happens with pretty much all laser printers. With these little "toaster" models, it's way more obvious because they work faster than the old school printers, and since the path through the machine is shorter, that hot paper pops right out immediately.
When the paper is damp (which is super noticeable on rainy days), those rollers heat it up instantly to bake the toner at over 200°F—because that's literally their job! Once it hits the air, that moisture escapes as a cloud of steam. One time, a guest actually tried to pour soda on my printer because he thought it was catching fire!
The colder the room and the higher the humidity, the sooner you'll see this "problem." Also, pro tip: don't leave a big stack of paper sitting in the printer if you aren't printing constantly. These models don't have a proper paper tray or even a lid, so the paper just sits there soaking up moisture. In my experience, if you're in a dusty spot, it also picks up debris that can wreck the drum or mess up the toner, leaving you with smudgy, streaky prints that look like a cheap refill.
Lastly: paper quality matters!
The cheapest stuff absorbs moisture like crazy. Low-quality paper feels "limp" on rainy days, almost like laundry that didn't dry all the way. It gets sticky, hard to separate, and on older machines, the mechanism ends up grabbing multiple sheets at once. The paper curls, loses its shape, causes jams, and absolutely hates double-sided printing—it just jams constantly. (Back in the day, copy shops would switch to premium paper for double-sided jobs because the extra cost was cheaper than dealing with jams and wasted ink.)
If you're only printing small batches occasionally and the paper sits in a printer like this, it's worth spending a bit more on high-quality paper. You won't deal with nearly as many headaches. For low volumes, the price difference pays for itself by avoiding the frustration. For example, the green navigator 80 gr is top-tier stuff—it’s so crisp it feels like it could cut you. It handles humidity like a champ. I've run over 70,000 prints on it and had fewer than 100 jams, and most of those were on recycled paper.
Either that, or just keep your paper in the original wrapper and only take out what you need, then seal it back up to keep the moisture out. (Though that sounds a bit silly since the packaging on cheap paper is usually about as protective as a sieve.)
