[ILUG] Recomend a printer ? (OT: DeskJet Autopsy)

[Ronan Cunniffe]

Quoting Justin MacCarthy <macarthy at iol.ie>:

> I would recommend HP up to a point (I've had a Deskjet540 and 640c). They
> seem to play nice with Linux- but they seem to develop a problem with the
> papar feeder after a while, i.e. to has problem pulling in the sheets. I'm
> not sure if this is due to the machine, the paper I'm using or the surface
> the deskjets sitting on(don't know if its level) Anyone else have this
> problem ?

If you mean that it just kicks them out rather than pulling them in, all that's 
happening is the movement lifting the paper up to the roller is too violent and 
the top page goes airborne and slides down the slope (only a little, but 
enough).  Solved by keeping a finger pressed against the trailing edge.

My DJ600 died by starting to make "I'm-trying-to-break-some-internal-part" 
noises and refusing to feed the page, calling it a paper jam.  So I took the 
thing apart to find out what was going on.

Ouch.
There's two "wings" that fold in over the paper tray to separate the latest 
sheet from previous, normally folded in because of gravity, then lifted aside by 
some mysterious force to drop the sheet onto the others.

The mysterious force turns out to be a FLBOP (Fiddly Little Bit Of Plastic), 
located at the extreme left of the print engine, sliding left and right with a 
travel of about 1 cm, and completely unpowered, free to be wiggled around by 
puzzled fingers.

Except, as suggested by the patterns of mechanical wear, and proved by a trial 
run, it would be hit by the print head moved to the extreme left.  You no longer 
need to guess where the print head of a DJ600 is during a paper feed.  Not only 
that, but it has to be 'picked up' again by the printhead on the way back, like 
it's edge triggered.  Except the tolerances are tiny, and the bump meant to pick 
up the carriage on the return stroke wears away, and then FLBOP is left in the 
wrong place, and when the printing mechanism tries to switch to printing mode, 
there's a load clack and a paper jam error.

This is a ghastly piece of design, using the print carriage to headbutt things 
into the right place!  Whatever happened to "every tool should do one job and do 
it well"?
One thing makes it worse.  It chose (as usual) the worst time to die, and we had 
to get a new printer straight away.  Another HP, only because I hadn't 
discovered the above at the time.

Ronan