Posted on 03/12/2018 6:30:27 AM PDT by dennisw
The “fanning” of the stack of paper — what I learned decades ago. It seemed to work.
Fanning the paper helps a great deal. If it’s humid it breaks what little surface tension there may be due to moisture. If it’s dry it breaks any static charge that may have developed. Either way, the individual sheets are far more likely to feed individually if the paper’s fanned prior to inserting.
I break printers for a living.
Let's start a company!
Why is a STEM heads-up in the middle of a laser printer topic?
Clicked on thread to find that. Didn’t take long.
When it comes to printers, apparently you’d “hit it”! Ha!
I thought you might be interested. If it’s not your thing, no worries.
I should explain that the full article went into detail about the engineering, chemical and mechanical issues as well as paper consistency, air flow and humidity.
Back in the '90s I bought, sold, and repaired LaserJets "I", II, III, and IV, as well as their P versions, and some Lexmark and Okidata machines. I still use HP LaserJets exclusively for personal work, and have little or no problems with them when properly maintained.
Probably the single most damaging source of problems is trying to use cheap, thin paper. The printers work best on HP-recommended paper from sources that cater to the needs of the laser printers that are more finicky than copier machines. I cannot tell you how many feed rollers I replaced, but it was a lot. Poor paper wore them out real quickly.
Another common thing that resulted in problems was second-source poorly remanufactured toner cartridges. Lots of those companies sprang up back in the day, and cost their customers more than the amount saved from using premium cartridges. I did learn how to repair these printers from a local fellow who really did refill cartridges. But his facility was super-clean, he used high-quality bulk toner equal to or better than that used by HP, and his recycled cartridge bodies were thoroughly cleaned/repaired, and the transfer rollers replaced.
He had learned the electrostatic toner printing business as a technician keeping high-volume corporate office copiers working. He got out of that because the copier companies found it more advantageous to simply replace under warranty parts that were quickly worn or broken because of internal filthiness of the machines, rather than taking the time to throughly clean the malfunctioning machines. Otherwise the machines would have lasted far longer after the warranty lapsed, and the new macine sales would have been undermined.
He built a small and profitable line of his own by purchasing such out-of-warranty or surplus machines, restoring them to fully as-new condition, and leasing them out (not selling the machine) on a set fee of cents-per-page contract. If your machine was not working correctly, without further question he immediately replaced the machine and took the malfunctioning machine back to the shop for repair and reissue to replace another machine somewhere else. Happy customer with very low on-site down time; and a clean, properly working machines at all times earned good profitability on investment for both partners in the lease agreement .
So the upshot is that on the Laser printers that use the same principle is that simple first-echelon cleaning and maintenance by the owner, with good quality cartridges and paper, with replacement of the feed roller by an approved technician as soon as skipping starts, will lead to happiness.
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