3 ms·

Brother bought a bunch of bad caps for their laser printers during lockdown. Now a year later things are coming home to roost. You can see it on the forums and

by kurthr 4y ago

Brother bought a bunch of bad caps for their laser printers during lockdown. Now a year later things are coming home to roost. You can see it on the forums and on YouTube. Failures at right about the same 8-10000 hours, but since they're used in the power supply and printers are plugged in all the time... they die right outside warranty. Wouldn't be surprised if there's a class action, where everyone gets $5 off a new printer.

pcurve 4y ago
what a shame. Been using Brother HL-2170w printer for 15 years without any problem. And it was less than $120 new.
autoexec 4y ago
Printer companies are all basically evil, but Brother somehow got a decent reputation. I've got an old brother printer that isn't affected by this, and I really hope they do right by their customers here. Any company can get scammed on crap parts, either because they took a gamble trying to save a few cents or because those parts were all they could get their hands on, but now that's come back to bite them it's up to brother to put things right. It'd be shame for brother to trash their brand over a batch of bad capacitors. I've been happier with my current printer than any printer I've had since I got rid of my old dot matrix Epson, but we're going to need a new printer eventually, and I'd really like to not have to think too much about what brand to get or recommend.
- ckozlowski 4y ago
  > Any company can get scammed on crap parts, either because they took a gamble trying to save a few cents or because those parts were all they could get their hands on It's true, though in the latter case, it can't be helped. I worked at an integrator from 2002-2005. Small outfit, building PCs and servers for businesses and local agencies. As a new member of their engineering department, one of the first issues we got asked to investigate was to look at heightened failures of network cards. Back then, we bought the ubiquitous 3Com 3C-905. All of our PCs were subjected to a battery of functional tests before shipping, and we were finding that an abnormal number of the cards were failing. We started looking at the failed ones more closely, and found them running extremely hot. These were passively cooled cards, and didn't need a heatsink under normal conditions. But on any of these, you couldn't hold a finger against without burning yourself. Functional ones as well. We got the batch of serial numbers, and send them to 3Com to ask what might be going on. And the answer we got was that they didn't exist. A bit of back and forth between 3Com, the distributor (a well-known and established company) and ourselves led us all to believe that they were a counterfit batch that entered the supply chain. We tracked down all of the cards from that order, and opened up every boxed PC that was to ship with one (I'll never forget the company president with his business shirt sleeves rolled up and a box cutter in his hand. He set the tone) and we pulled out every one. We sourced from reputable places, and I don't recall another instance of that occurring while I was there. But it was an interesting event in my career, and one I'll never forget.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  HP and Epson have done horridly anti-consumer things, while Brother's items "just work" and are OS neutral.

by kurthr 4y ago

pcurve 4y ago

what a shame. Been using Brother HL-2170w printer for 15 years without any problem. And it was less than $120 new.

autoexec 4y ago

Printer companies are all basically evil, but Brother somehow got a decent reputation. I've got an old brother printer that isn't affected by this, and I really hope they do right by their customers here. Any company can get scammed on crap parts, either because they took a gamble trying to save a few cents or because those parts were all they could get their hands on, but now that's come back to bite them it's up to brother to put things right. It'd be shame for brother to trash their brand over a batch of bad capacitors. I've been happier with my current printer than any printer I've had since I got rid of my old dot matrix Epson, but we're going to need a new printer eventually, and I'd really like to not have to think too much about what brand to get or recommend.

ckozlowski 4y ago
> Any company can get scammed on crap parts, either because they took a gamble trying to save a few cents or because those parts were all they could get their hands on It's true, though in the latter case, it can't be helped. I worked at an integrator from 2002-2005. Small outfit, building PCs and servers for businesses and local agencies. As a new member of their engineering department, one of the first issues we got asked to investigate was to look at heightened failures of network cards. Back then, we bought the ubiquitous 3Com 3C-905. All of our PCs were subjected to a battery of functional tests before shipping, and we were finding that an abnormal number of the cards were failing. We started looking at the failed ones more closely, and found them running extremely hot. These were passively cooled cards, and didn't need a heatsink under normal conditions. But on any of these, you couldn't hold a finger against without burning yourself. Functional ones as well. We got the batch of serial numbers, and send them to 3Com to ask what might be going on. And the answer we got was that they didn't exist. A bit of back and forth between 3Com, the distributor (a well-known and established company) and ourselves led us all to believe that they were a counterfit batch that entered the supply chain. We tracked down all of the cards from that order, and opened up every boxed PC that was to ship with one (I'll never forget the company president with his business shirt sleeves rolled up and a box cutter in his hand. He set the tone) and we pulled out every one. We sourced from reputable places, and I don't recall another instance of that occurring while I was there. But it was an interesting event in my career, and one I'll never forget.
unethical_ban 4y ago
HP and Epson have done horridly anti-consumer things, while Brother's items "just work" and are OS neutral.