An OEM maintenance kit is a preventative medicine for your laser printer. Through extensive testing, HP engineers have identified laser printer parts that experience similar wear patterns over time. These parts -- used by HP service personnel to repair printers like yours -- are the same parts contained in your maintenance kit.

OEM maintenance kits are the most convenient and economical way to maintain and repair your HP LaserJet line of printers. Each OEM kit contains the parts most commonly used to repair and rebuild HP LaserJet printers at considerable savings off their individual purchase price. Regardless of the size of your business, regular use of OEM Printer Maintenance Kits for HP printers helps to maximize laser printer performance and eliminate repeat service calls.

It is essential to know why you should use the HP OEM Maintenance Kits. Although not required, regular insertion of an OEM maintenance kit in your HP printer helps you eliminate repeat service calls and maximize the paper feed and print quality performance of your laser printer. In addition, maintenance kits are priced substantially lower than if you were to purchase these same parts individually.

What are OEM LaserJet maintenance kits?
OEM LaserJet Maintenance Kits contain the parts most commonly used to repair and rebuild HP LaserJet printers, at a considerable savings from the cost of the individual parts. A typical laser printer maintenance kit contains paper pickup rollers, paper feed/separation rollers, a transfer roller, and the fuser assembly.

The fuser assembly uses heat and pressure to fuse or melt the toner into the paper. Due to the heat and pressure this assembly is subject to mechanical wear. The heating element is also subject to electrical failure.

The Transfer Roller is the black/gray sponge like roller, which runs the width of the paper path and is positioned just below the toner cartridge. During the printing process, this roller is electrically charged and as the paper passes between this roller and the drum in the toner cartridge, the toner from the drum is transferred to the paper. It is subject to mechanical wear and degradation of its ability to hold a uniform charge. It also accumulates paper dust.

The Paper Pickup or feed/separation roller is used to pickup and feed the paper and is subject to mechanical wear and oxidation. The rubber compound used to manufacture these critical parts is important and you can use original equipment parts here since the manufacturer has invested heavily in determining the best material to use.

How & when to install a new OEM maintenance kit?
The recommended replacement interval varies depending on the printer. Usually, you should install a new OEM maintenance kit every 25,000 to 350,000 pages. On some machines, a message appears on the display to indicate that maintenance is required. You can continue to use the printer, but for optimum performance it is recommended that the maintenance kit be installed. Once the maintenance kit is installed you can reset the display message with the instructions included. The OEM parts included in these kits have varying estimated service lives -- depending on the kit. These estimates may vary, however, depending upon such things as printer user maintenance, printer application, operating environment, and the print media used. Any printer servicing should include inspection of the components.