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Clearing Printer Jams
Clearing Printer Jams
All printers have 3 handling areas
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Input Tray Area
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Top Cover Area
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Output Area
A jam can occur in any of these 3 areas
If the printer is reporting a paper jam, shutdown the printer and be sure to check all 3 areas for the problem page.
To clear the jam, you just have to follow the paper’s path through the printer.
Input Tray Area
- Pull out each of the paper trays. Your printer may have 2, 3 or 4 trays available so make sure to check each tray.
- Most printers print from the lowest tray first then move up to the next tray in line as paper runs out in each tray.
- The paper moves up through each tray as it is passed to the toner assembly.
- Make sure that the tray has not been overfilled or filled with the wrong kind of paper 20 lb letter size multi use paper is the best.
- Do not reuse paper
- Do not feed labels into the printers more than once
- Make sure that any transparency paper that you use are rated for laser printers as any other kind will melt and may start on fire in the fuser.
- Inspect the trays for misfed, misaligned or jammed paper and remove any that you find.
- Close all the drawers and move to the next area of the printer
Top Cover Area
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This is the area where the printer applies toner to the pages.
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To access this part of the paper path, first open the top cover and remove the toner cartridge usually by pulling up and away on the cartridge. The toner cartridge is light sensitive so cover the toner cartridge while it is out of the printer.
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Inspect the area where the toner cartridge was installed, look for misfed, misaligned or jammed paper and remove any that you find.
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If you discover a problem that can’t be cleared or something that appears to be damaged, call the helpdesk.
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Otherwise, replace the cartridge and close the top cover.
Note: Take care with spilled toner it is best cleaned up with a dry cloth. If you spill any on yourself you can wash it off with COLD water (no hot water as it can cause the toner to set)
Output Area
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This is the area where the paper comes out of the printer.
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Usually printers have a back door that allows you access to the paper right after it comes out of the fuser.
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In some printers (laser jet 4/4m) this is a common jam point. Check the path as it goes from the fuser (Caution: the fuser is very hot) to the output bin looking for jams, misfed paper or misalignments; remove any problems that are discovered and close the drawer.
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Turn the printer on and watch the printer as it starts up. It should resume printing at the point before the jam occurred.
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If the printer jams again call the helpdesk as the jam may be in an inaccessible area or there may be rollers that need to be replaced.
Noisy printers are usually caused by rollers rubbing against each other, this is NORMAL and does not indicate a problem with the printer unless it is accompanied by consistent jamming.
