4050 makes growling noises

[Don Smith]

My HP 4050 sounds like a meat grinder with the paper tray and toner cartridge removed. It does print great, but takes a little longer than it should. The three most recent events are the same: 13.1 50. Any ideas?

[cs_steve]

With the tray installed, a common source of that noise would be the feed/separation rollers for Tray 2 .... You could try replacing that roller kit.

However, you said you had the Tray removed, so there are a few other potential noisemakers:

1. The most common cause of "growling" would be worn/non-meshing fuser gears...you can try to tighten the left screw on the fuser to create more pressure in the gear area; if this doesn't help (probably won't) and the noise is still unbearable you should probably replace the fuser (install a new maintenance kit).
2. The other issue (not as likely) can be worn/dirty gears in the main gear drive assembly ... these could be chipped or dirty and need re-greasing ... however cleaning these / greasing these is something you might want to have a printer tech do instead of just going at it yourself ...

Speed is not really a mechanical issue...there are "time-delay" sensors throughout the machine, so if the printer begins printing and is mechanically delayed, those delays trigger an automatic paper jam ...
However, slower startup speed can be a memory issue or a software/connection issue...
If you send a print job and the printer takes forever to start printing, you should try a new driver (download one from HP.com), check the connection cable, and if you're sending big print jobs you might want to upgrade the amount of memory you have installed ...

[prntrfxr]

Depends on where the noise is coming from.

There are 4 p/u rollers RB1-8865 in this machine, then 1 feed & 1 separation roller RF5-1885. Make sure the shaft that has the 4 p/u rollers hasn't lost a tension spring. Follow cs_steve's advise and change the maintenance kit if it needs it. The 4 p/u rollers are not part of the kit, so you have to buy those separate.