Tuesday 29 November 2011

HP Colour Laserjet 5550 Fuser Jam - stuck to rollers

We've had this problem on and off for a couple of years. Basically I'll come to the printer and it'll be jammed in the top compartment in the fuser unit, sometimes slightly concertina'd, but always with messed up black toner melted on the back of the paper.

Once we took the paper out, the printer would try printing the same print again and jam again! After a while the fuser unit gets more and more clogged with melted toner.

To get out of this loop, I disconnected the network cable (so no more jobs would be accepted) and kept pressing the stop button to cancel the jobs in memory.

To get the 'gunk' off the rollers I went into the 'diagnose' option, and did a paper path thing. This prints off a small bit of text, but is good for getting the toner off the rollers. After a few of these there was no more residue left on the rollers.

Normal print jobs after this worked fine. After a lot of a trials I finally worked out that the print jobs that jam in the fuser unit tend to be mainly black. I tested this theory by printing out a pure black sheet in Photoshop. Blocked it.

It looks as though if the first portion of the print job is very black, the front end of the paper sticks to the rollers and misses the point where it is meant to continue on the paper path and instead, continues to go around the roller.

I've done a few searches to see if anyone else has had the same problems, but alas they have not. My only thoughts are that the fuser unit is not getting hot enough (or too hot) and making the toner stick to it?

I've found one setting for the fuser to switch it from "fast" to "normal" for warmup? This hasn't helped though. I shall update this when I find more information. If anyone has the same trouble I'd be happy to hear it.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Steve..
    I'm a computer service tech looking for info on just this problem.
    Customer/end user complains of jams at the fuser/wrapping around it when printing pages with full printing/lots of toner and started doing it anytime.
    Constant wrap around the fuser if I ran the demo print under the information menu.
    I ran the 'full calibrate' function under the 'print quality' which is under the 'configure device' menu.
    After running the 'full calibrate' function I was able run off a over fifteen prints of the demo copy w/o an issue.
    The customer informed me that this problem started occurring most frequently after moving the printer from one facility 20 miles to another facility.I also noticed that 3 of the 4 toner/drum cartridges we 'refurbs'by IPW...which they recieved accidently ordering their supplies ...may or may not be relevant.
    After listening to customer issues and gathering all the information I could get from the end user.I decided that doing the 'full calibrate' might not be a bad thing...go figure..
    Bob D.roaldrd2@hotmail.com

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  2. Hi, Good post on the topic of printer fuser service. Printers are totally different from computers and it is a different service altogether. We are a hp printer service centers in Chennai and must say that poss like these are very useful to our service team.

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