HP 5110 Service Station Gear Box Assembly

	Re: HP 5110 Service Station Gear Box Assembly by airpay (1/14/07 9:16 AM) reply	+ / -
Here's my 2-cents on fixing an HP OJ 5110 with the gear assembly issue. I've had one of these 5110 units sitting in my home office for a couple of years. Using the information on this site, I've made some progress. For what its worth, its a piece of junk, and I think it was designed that way. First of all - big shout out to 'cogtx' where ever you are out in cyberspace - THANKS!!! "cogtx" is the person who took and posted the photos with step by step dissassembly instructions. Kinda makes you realize what a great tool the internet is. http://pg.photos.yahoo.com A couple of insights on my OJ5110 experience: - I have a home office and work for a large tech company, and we were given these things a couple of years ago to fax, print and copy - (ironically, HP is one of our big customers). Of the dozen of us who have them, ALL of them have failed, most of them the same way - the 'carriage jam' issue. - My 5110 has been sitting in a corner of the garage for almost 2 years now since it died a month after the warranty was up. Today I had to send a fax from home (weekend) and I thought of the 5110. Unfortunately, you can't just use the fax if the carriage jam problem occurs. I was about to drop the unit into the trash, but decided to do a quick check on the internet and found this forum site - gold mine! - Just for kicks, I chatted with HP support and they acknowleged it was a problem unit but told me it was not worth repairing. They offerred to sell me a refurbished newer HP model for $159. I told them I could walk across the street to Staples and get a Lexmark or Brother unit new in a box for $89, and she immediately matched the price, but not including shipping and handling - just lets you know what their priorities are. - Our IT guy was so dissappointed in these 5110 that we changed all our local office (100 people) printers to Lexmark units last year - no more HP in our building. - Since I saw the photos linked from this site, and wanted to send a fax from home, I disassembled the 5110 just for fun yesterday; here's what I learned over about 2 hours, 2 cups of coffee and alot of jellybeans: a) its fairly simple to dissassemble with cogtx's photos (see link above or google around), but you need a #10 TORX screwdriver and a couple of good flathead ones for the tabs; b) the printer ink sump gets very clogged with dried ink - terrible design, and it should be user cleanable - no wonder this thing is prone to failure. c) wear gloves - accessing the broken gear on the side of the printer sump means dealing with ALOT of ink & goo, including a brick of dried ink-paste. I rinsed all of the sump and sponges in water, and there was ALOT of ink and alot of mess. d) rinse the stripped gears and you can see how poorly designed this unit is - they use soft nylon gears in a sump clogged with sticky ink - it had to fail; e) my suggestion for fixing the stripped lower sump gear: I drilled a tiny 1/16 inch hole thruough the tope of the plastic center shaft of gear, about 90 degrees from where the broken nylon tab was, then carefully screwed+glued a tiny short screw into the hole, testing to make sure it did not protrude into the center of the hole where it mounts to the sump frame - I got the tiny screw from an old floppy disk drive - its one of the tiny screws that holds the metal top cover of the drive to its chassis (perhaps a watch or eyeglass screw will also do); the screw head and body stick out just enough to turn the pin on the upper sump gear; be careful to make sure the gears spin easily & lube them with some oil before reassembling. (f) reassembled the unit - don't tighten the screws back in too tightly, especially on the sumpgear cover or they wont spin freely. I powered up the unit and it didn't give me the carriage jam anymore... but the unit has other problems... I had to clean the contacts for both cartridges, but I think maybe one or both the b/w and colour cartridges are so old or almost dry/empty. My current issue is that it says "press enter to align cartridges" but when I do, it just makes some roller noises but does not take any paper when it says "printing alignment page" and as such, there is no alignment page for it to detect on the next step. Its currently in stand-alone mode. Not sure if using the SW driver will help - any comments? It did however send a fax for me. For this alone, it might be worth keeping... until I wander into Staples and pickup a $100 newer unit - pretty impressive what you can get in an all-in-one these days: fax, print, scan, copy, LCD screen, network port. I noticed that they carry alot of Lexmark, Epson, and Brother office multi-units there, but only a few low-end HP units. I wonder if alot of other people, like me, are wary of HP all in ones now. I have learned a bit about how this thing operates, and I sent my fax. I won't hesitate to junk this unit now. peace-out! airpay in canada