3 ms·

I still hate printers, and their jams, but I must reluctantly appreciate the engineering behind them after reading this. This seems quite clever: 'Corrugating

I still hate printers, and their jams, but I must reluctantly appreciate the engineering behind them after reading this. This seems quite clever: 'Corrugating is when we put an intentional wave in the sheet, like in a piece of corrugated cardboard,” Vicki Warner explained. “It adds stiffness.” The plan was to corrugate the sheet lengthwise by running it over a line of rollers turning at variable speeds before “flying it” into the stacker. If a physical fix was necessary, a part might be 3-D-printed and installed, on-site, by one of the engineers.'

asciimo 9y ago
The challenge helps explain why the user experience for desktop printers hasn't changed much in 25 years.
jeremy7600 9y ago
I have been a part of this process at Xerox.. it works quite well.. I've been involved in a number of different aspects of it as well. I've been the source of some of these fixes, I've been the source of some of the issues, and I've been involved in the investigations to solve them. Xerox has a few different labs for testing different things. The "stub point" is a common thing, and can be very, very difficult to pinpoint. They had one specific finisher that kept jamming when you printed to the top tray. It didn't jam 100%, it was pretty intermittent. Well, this finisher had been in another lab for a few weeks or so and they couldn't find the source of the jams or a pattern to them. I had the finisher installed on one of my machines in the 3 days I'd solved it. There was a small stub of plastic on a flag for a sensor. The flag sits in the paper path, and when its moved, the sensor changes state. So this flag has an pretty smooth surface so as to not catch the paper, but somehow this one got a little nick in it. Enough to cause a jam when a sheet ran right into the nick. I filed it down and the machine never jammed again. We had another issue with a printer at a customer site and the issue dealt with static electricty. a 30kv ESD gun and the inside of a printer.. we still never solved the issue.

asciimo 9y ago

The challenge helps explain why the user experience for desktop printers hasn't changed much in 25 years.

jeremy7600 9y ago

I have been a part of this process at Xerox.. it works quite well.. I've been involved in a number of different aspects of it as well. I've been the source of some of these fixes, I've been the source of some of the issues, and I've been involved in the investigations to solve them. Xerox has a few different labs for testing different things. The "stub point" is a common thing, and can be very, very difficult to pinpoint. They had one specific finisher that kept jamming when you printed to the top tray. It didn't jam 100%, it was pretty intermittent. Well, this finisher had been in another lab for a few weeks or so and they couldn't find the source of the jams or a pattern to them. I had the finisher installed on one of my machines in the 3 days I'd solved it. There was a small stub of plastic on a flag for a sensor. The flag sits in the paper path, and when its moved, the sensor changes state. So this flag has an pretty smooth surface so as to not catch the paper, but somehow this one got a little nick in it. Enough to cause a jam when a sheet ran right into the nick. I filed it down and the machine never jammed again. We had another issue with a printer at a customer site and the issue dealt with static electricty. a 30kv ESD gun and the inside of a printer.. we still never solved the issue.