Color LaserJet 8550DN - jams often

[rmmartel]

Greetings,

Is it just ours, or are the 8550 color printers very "needy"? Ours always seems to need excessive TLC. At least when it prints the quality is very good.

I am seeing paper jams - mostly "input" paper jams three or four times within 100 pages printed. I swapped out paper, I have replaced feed rollers with new ones. I moved the sizes of paper to different trays, stopped using tray 4 thinking it might be the issue - no dice.

I also see occasionally see paper folding up inside the unit both above and below the drum - the jams above the drum are fun b/c the printer doesn't sense them and keeps on printing with the result of wonderful smears down the pages - very artistic.

So I have a nice collection of 13.00.02, 13.00.06, 13.00.00 and 13.11.3B event codes in my error log.

Any hints on where to look, what might need to be replaced to get more reliability out of this printer? With budget's so tight I can't call a tech out to spend hours troubleshooting the problem - I'd like to narrow it down first so I can give the bosses an estimate on what repair might be.

Thanks!

[MichaelTech]

Color printing aint cheap! You may need a complete maintenence kit.
As fusers wear, timing suffers. Same with other items.
A cleaning roller may be dirty, the ICL arm may be broken, duplexer going bad,
dirty sensors. etc. You should look into a replacement printer for the cost of the repairs on this one.

[cs_steve]

Two suggestions:

-- If you're replacing parts with "off-brand" rollers, switch brands to the genuine HP OEM feed/pickup rollers.

-- It might need a replacement Paper Input Unit ... this color printer is similar in design to the monochrome LaserJet 8100, which has a notorious problem with Paper Input Units failing and causing paper jams... (not a cheap part, and not an easy-to-replace part)

[nalee]

I've found that some fusers seem to have more issues than others, yours may fall into this boat. It could be paper jamed in the fuser somewhere near the gears, or the fuser could just be goin out. Good luck