I have been hovering about this site for a week or so now, and I have found lots of great info here. I was linked to it when I was searching for power issues with HP DeskJet 2000c .. R13 black as it could be. Anyways.. I work for a school board and am now responcible for servicing several thousand printers.. DeskJet 600, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, and 1200 series... LaserJet 3, 4, 4 Plus, 5, 5L, 5P, 6, 6L, 6P, 1100, 4000, 4050, 8100... are some of the main ones I have to work with. I have only been repairing printers for 9 months or so but in that time have seen a lot of them. I like reading all your replies.. you each have your own tricks of the trade that you can pick up on.. but I have found the most useful things besides structured troubleshooting is to know the design flaws in all the models.. the parts that fail regularily... I would like to ask advice from the people here who service pritners professionally..
HP LaserJet 4 and 5 ... 90% of the time the repair tag says "jamming paper" .. cause.. glazed upper and lower output rollers. I find putting the roller in a drill press and using low grit sand paper.. sand off the glazz..not so much that it changes the diameter of the roller a significant amount..just enough to get past the glazz and to the good rubber...then a few aplications of renew will get the roller reconditioned for perfect opperation once again. what I dont know however is how long that roller will last. I let a good amount of renew soak in to allow the rubber to swell and regain as much moisture as it can, but obviously this roller will not have the same life spand. If I can prevent the school from having to spend $44 bucks for new rollers if they can get a year or 2 out of a renewed roller.. then I find that money saved to the board and those schools... but if this is going to cause similar problems and repeat customers soner than what would make it worth while then I can toss every roller. I find I get great results with renew.. where as a lot of people here seem to not put much faith in renew. I would say these printers shoot out anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 pages a year.. (depending on if they are a lab printer or classrommprinter) Comments....
4000, 4050 ... a lot of the time these come is because of multipul sheet feed on MP tray. Even though changing the separation pad is a 1 minute job.. I always fully overhaul the printer.. they always have thier share of dust and crap in them. What all would you guys concider "preventative maintenance"?..
I have been asked to look into avaliable courses for printer repair. HP certified get discounts on parts correct? I think thats thier aim. thier web page doesnt seem to show any that would deal with the older models I work with. They are also starting to buy Lexmark T630 and T520 lasers.. but paying a fortune for service warranties because nobody is trained to repair them. Anybody taken any they would suggest? Moe I read just today you bashing the poor training by HP... they do not have to be HP or LEX.. as long as they offer some sort of certification or whatnot..
Anyways... any coments on anything here are welcomed.. even if they contradict something somebody else has said... Moe.. great site... I see you have helped a lot of people.. and I have refferenced the page more than once in the last week.. not to save $$ by fixing my own printer.. but to help me become better at my job. I am glad you offer a useful service to create revenu with this page (parts and kits) instead of charging for the forum or littering it with ads.
~Craig
Re: Printer repair prectice by dmzcompute (10/13/04 8:13 PM) reply
Craig I have been working on printers for many years. Moe has a point on HP certification. I am HP certified and all that means is I passed either a inhouse course given by them or one of their training partners or have taken a certification test on partner web site and passed. You can not become HP certified unless you work for a HP Partner. When you go to one of the training courses all you are given is basics on laser printer operation and then you proceed to tear down and reassemble a number of current printers. You are learning the correct way which is hands on. That is the only way to become a good technician. You can order parts from Moe's company which sells them at a reasonable price usually less then HP. You can also contact other HP parts vendors such as Partsnow.com and Depot-america.com for their prices. Most sell for less than HP since they buy in quanity or are HP authorized and get discounts themselves. My suggestion is to get together all the service manuals for the printers you work with. I find that HP manuals are easy to work with and their descriptions for removal and replacement of parts is the best in the industry. I also do Lexmark, Tektronix, QMS Minolta and others and none of them come close with their documentation. The other advice is to use this board. There are many knowledgable posters who can be of considerable help for the weird issues.
Post to this thread Post a new message thread
