Stocker

Thanks to Jesus!

As my last job was about to fold up, the HP LaserJet 4 quit putting pages out. It would have taken more to troubleshoot than the cost of a new printer (we billed out at $150/hr) so they let me take it home, free. I cleaned the top rollers and it worked for another three years.

Recently it stopped putting pages out reliably but it would print a page at a time. Then it just plain stopped turning on. It jammed, I turned it off and back on and it never came up. I took it to work to troubleshoot, and it turned on immediately. I cleaned the top roller again and took it home. And it jammed on the first sheet every time.

We did some research and I got myself all set mentally to spend $300-400 on a color laser printer (I refused long ago to ever buy another ink jet) and I decided to give one more go at the old LaserJet 4. I did some investigating online and set to work. The leading edge of each page was catching on the bottom of the toner cartridge. I reseated the cartridge.

Prints! fing02.gif What a blessing! hail.gif

(this printer is a baby, by the way, only 221,750 prints on it)

HyundaiKitCoupe

i have the same problem with my hp. but it's not just the paper jamming, it uses ink quick (apparently now they have small ink and large ink) and it scans crooked and the software can't understand itself.

my used refrigerator from 1980 (i can hear it running now) and says made in USA on the back outlasted 4 new refrigerators.

today it's cheaper for the companies to make cheap sh** and have people buying them, than it is to make good products. hewlett packard and micorsoft are a good examples of bad products that break and are re-bought and upgraded. macintosh is a good example of good products that unfortunately suffer because they don't break so nobody needs upgrades (macintosh was invented by a Polish guy in cali yes i had to add that). if they want China and India to make our stuff then they need to impose some higher standards. until then when somebody says American is the best, well then the land is flat. my hp's from 13 years ago are so much better. and believe it or not i have a laser Apple printer that was once made in the USA that would be able to make newspapers if it was programmed to.

everything has advanced so much. you can watch movies on your phone. why haven't printers gotten better?

DTN

Sounds like alot of non-technical people at your work.


Here's my idea of the business model of technical manufacturing companies today:

1. Make complex proprietary piece of equipment.
2. Provide overly user-friendly external appearance for everything so the inside of the unit is more threatening.
3. Ensure complex proprietary equipment requires regular maintenance
4. Do not provide service or maintenance manual
5. Ensure at least 1/2 of repair parts for complex proprietary equipment cost at least 1/3 the value of the entire product
6. Ensure at least 1/2 of regular maintenance for complex proprietary equipment cost at least 1/2 the value of the entire product.
7. Ensure the use of the latest security screws so that noone has the proper tools to work on the complex proprietary equipment except trained company personel.
8. Ensure capacitors are located in a remote section of the unit and require a special discharge procedure before service or damage may occour to the complex proprietary equipment.
9. Under no circumstances support the product for more then 2 years after the warranty is up.
10. Verify tech support personel have thick accents which makes getting instructions very difficult for end users

And that's my idea when I start designing my own equipment.