Chosen Solution
Message says “replace drum soon”. Machine is an MFCLC 2700 DW Where do I find A repair person in the San Francisco/OAkland (Alameda, California) area?
When it comes to Brother, the drum is considered a user replaceable consumable - this is something you can change yourself. Yours uses the DR-630. However, I am going to encourage you to reset it and use the existing drum a 2nd time - you can often reset the Brother printers 2 times comfortably and get full use out of the drum multiple times. Now yes, beyond 2 resets is when the drum is truly near the end of it’s life (it usually has something left and you can sometimes get a 3rd, but it’s running the risk of wearing mid reset). The other issue is even if there is anything meaningful left, other parts truly begin wearing out like the corona wire. See here for reset instructions. The reason I’m willing to mention this is Brother is frankly, conservative about the drum lifetimes - even the color lasers are just as underrated at times. Those are even worse when people prematurely replace the drums - because not only do they tell you that you need to replace the drums too early, you usually have to replace ALL 4 as a pair due to how the printer resets the drum counter (or if you buy OEM, you’re forced to buy 4). The issue is people who are technically naive believe the BS Brother says about this so they buy the new drum and they keep lying. They even lie about the ITB life on the color lasers in some cases (but can sometimes be truthful - if it says 100k or more, it’s accurate. Anything less is BS for a user replaceable ITB). Between the imaging drum lifetime lie, a lack of override out on the color lasers I’m sticking to HP and Canon for my CD cover art project color laser even if the “lifetime” ITB means new printer if it fails - they AT LEAST let you assume the risk. The risk you take doing this is some of them is you cannot easily reset mid cycle, so you do run the risk of a unexpected drum wearout mid cycle if you do this and will need to deal with an inaccurate counter until you buy a new drum and reset it properly. If that risk isn’t something you like, you can find remanufactured drums for this printer for a fraction of the price.
