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Why Paper Jams Persist (newyorker.com)
A trivial problem reveals the limits of technology. Fascinating story from The New Yorker: Unsurprisingly, the engineers who specialize in paper jams see them differently. Engineers tend to work in narrow subspecialties, but solving a jam requires knowledge of physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, computer programming, and interface design. "It's the ultimate challenge," Ruiz said.
"I wouldn't characterize it as annoying," Vicki Warner, who leads a team of printer engineers at Xerox, said of discovering a new kind of paper jam. "I would characterize it as almost exciting." When she graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, in 2006, her friends took jobs in trendy fields, such as automotive design. During her interview at Xerox, however, another engineer showed her the inside of a printing press. All Xerox printers look basically the same: a million-dollar printing press is like an office copier, but twenty-four feet long and eight feet high. Warner watched as the heavy, pale-gray double doors swung open to reveal a steampunk wonderland of gears, wheels, conveyor belts, and circuit boards. As in an office copier, green plastic handles offer access to the "paper path" -- the winding route, from "feeder" to "stacker," along which sheets of paper are shocked and soaked, curled and decurled, vacuumed and superheated. "Printers are essentially paper torture chambers," Warner said, smiling behind her glasses. "I thought, This is the coolest thing I've ever seen."
"I wouldn't characterize it as annoying," Vicki Warner, who leads a team of printer engineers at Xerox, said of discovering a new kind of paper jam. "I would characterize it as almost exciting." When she graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, in 2006, her friends took jobs in trendy fields, such as automotive design. During her interview at Xerox, however, another engineer showed her the inside of a printing press. All Xerox printers look basically the same: a million-dollar printing press is like an office copier, but twenty-four feet long and eight feet high. Warner watched as the heavy, pale-gray double doors swung open to reveal a steampunk wonderland of gears, wheels, conveyor belts, and circuit boards. As in an office copier, green plastic handles offer access to the "paper path" -- the winding route, from "feeder" to "stacker," along which sheets of paper are shocked and soaked, curled and decurled, vacuumed and superheated. "Printers are essentially paper torture chambers," Warner said, smiling behind her glasses. "I thought, This is the coolest thing I've ever seen."
As a former tester, I recall spending days trying to understand how and where jams occurred. My favorite paper jam issue was not one my team suffered, but another team that was working on a small laser jet printer.
One of the media ('paper types') that was suppose to be supported was transparencies. HP Printers allow you to specify the type of paper (to items like 'plain', 'cardstock', etc.), but many people would leave it at default. If the default was left, the printer needed to at least survive the print job, even if it was a bit of a mess. So those transparencies were a rather special case. The fuser, the part designed to join the bits of toner to the media, had to work in many different climates, from 65 F degrees, low humidity to 90+ F degrees, 90% humidity, and in order to make that fuser optimal, the printer had to compensate. With transparencies, as I recall, in the cold, the fuser would heat up a bit more to compensate and so with transparency, the fuser would fuse the the transparency to the fuser. We lost several million dollar prototypes's fusers and days of productivity to this issue. Ultimately, I believe HP decided it was cheaper to pay the warranty costs than it was to fix the issue.
Yeah, I recall thing being much worse when I was dealing with tractor fed dot matrix printers and early inkjets. I have a $50 laser printer from Walmart that is about 5 years old, and it very rarely gets paper jams. Usually only when the paper isn't in good condition or if you try to print double sided and run the same page through twice.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
which is probably not representative, paper jams persist because my employer buys the cheapest paper they can find. The kind that clumps and sticks to itself, that sheds paper dust like it's snowing, that has uneven edges, etc.
In a former life, I was a "key-operator" at a local Kinko's. Paper quality is just one of several factors. There's also the way you load it into the printer. Paper has a natural curl from being cut from rolls. IIRC, the curl is downward, so if you load paper from a ream, make sure to put the paper in the same orientation you got it out of the ream. Don't flip it. Then there's also humidity. It's a huge culprit. If it's too low, the sheets will cling together due to static electricity. If it's too high, the sheets will cling together because they're damp.Other reasons that exist are dirty fusers, worn or dirty rollers, bad toner cartridges, etc.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Correct. Without them, an army of midgets hiding inside would be jobless. And then what would they do? Run under tables and steal your breakfast. Youâ(TM)ll never catch them.
Having done printer repair, I am not proud of it but I needed the money.
However the most common causes are the following.
1. Worn out feet: Those rubber wheels that pull up the paper, get warn out over time and has a hard time grabbing the paper, when it does it is past the timeout period on the sensor.
2. Warn out fuser: The fuser is a heated roller they have a plastic/silicon covering on it, to prevent burning the paper. over time with heating and cooling the covering gets warped so the paper will not always fit in.
3. Bad Paper: Cheap paper that just sticks and doesn't flow properly.
4. A previous jam: There was a jam previously that wasn't as cleared out as people expected.
5. Bad ink (for solid ink printers): Cheap ink has a slightly different melting and cooling point then devices specification, causing ink to gum up the pathway.
6. Bad solenoid: over time they get sluggish or stuck.
7. Warn out gear. Those plastic gear if handing paper a bit too much for them ware out.
8. Blocked or malfunctioning sensor: a bad sensor says there is a problem when there isn't really anything.
9. Non-Paper blockage: Staples, Paperclips, bubble gum, rodents, bugs, hair, fingernails... causes blockage.
10. Abuse: Just smacking bending parts breaking pins....
Most of the Jamming problems can be fixed with regular maintenance. As unlike other computers moving parts (such as a hard drive, or DVD or floppy drives) there is a lot of torque and energy evolved with a lot of parts exposed to the elements.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"I share your concern. This is Slashdot. We can't be expected to, like, read the actual article."
That's too bad, because it turns out to be a REALLY GOOD article -- informative and very well written.
The answer turns out to be that paper is awful stuff. Its properties aren't uniform and vary with supplier and climate. And printers are trying to move the stuff precisely and quickly.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey