Top Tips to Extend the Life of Your Printer
Who doesn’t hate troubleshooting the printer?
We came across these tips the other day and thought we’d pass them along. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Here’s to keeping our work spaces and equipment clean, functional, and beautiful.
Clean the inside of your printer:
As simple as it may sound, one of the best preventive maintenance tasks you can perform is to keep your printer’s insides as clean as possible. It’s easy to do if you look for excess paper dust or other debris whenever you open up your printer. At least once a month—or more often if your users print a lot—use a can of compressed air to blow the dust and debris out of the printer.
Don’t use previously used paper:
Damaged paper can cause paper jams. Any time a paper jam occurs, there’s a possibility that something else on the printer can break. To prevent jams and other problems, always use new paper that isn’t bent, torn, or damaged in any way.
Don’t “fan” paper before loading:
There is a popular misconception that fanning a ream of paper before loading it in the print tray will reduce the number of paper jams. This is not true. You should avoid this practice because it can cause static electricity to build up between the sheets of paper, which actually causes even more paper jams. Today’s printers do a good job of separating pages in the paper tray just fine on their own.
Close the manual feed tray when not in use:
If the printer uses a manual feed tray for printing labels or legal-size documents, make sure that it’s always closed when not in use. A quick turn of a chair could cause a user to bump into the protruding tray and break it. Although it may be a slight inconvenience to keep unfolding the tray, it’s much safer in its stored position.
* Photo Credit: James F. Clay (Creative Commons)
