I’m attaching (I hope) a photo of the board that is the problem component of many Samsung Xpress C410W color laser printers.
If you look toward the center left of the board you will see a chip labelled ‘SAMSUNG ARM’ and that is the “brains” of the electronics of the printer. Considering semiconductor components either work as they are designed to or they don’t (there is no half functional or whatever) it is unlikely that this is an issue of a defective chip because that would create printers dead at first attempted use. As well, considering that when this printer fails as badly as I (and obviously many others) have experienced it must be a very critical component and so ARM chip (an ‘SoC’, System On a Chip) is the most likely culprit. Those ARMs (as is obvious in the photo) are electrically connected (soldered) entirely by many small, ball shaped contacts on their bottom, and although I cannot easily find the specifics of that chip there are probably a large number of contacts underneath that chip. Properly installing those BGA (ball grid array) chips on electronic boards is, as you can imagine, a tricky and challenging job. Industrially the work is done by machine of course but obviously it very difficult to truly verify that they are all done perfectly. I predict that one or more contacts under the ARM were poorly soldered and with movement of the board (as the printer gets moved or transported) plus temperature and even moisture fluctuations where the printer is or has been results in the poor connection(s) finally opening and the result is a dead, “bricked”, printer.
[document|4884]