5 ms·

I took a tour of HP's Boise test lab [1] a few years ago, and the biggest take-away from that for me was that (in their opinion) paper quality is one of the big

I took a tour of HP's Boise test lab [1] a few years ago, and the biggest take-away from that for me was that (in their opinion) paper quality is one of the biggest factors in printer reliablity. The test lab includes lots of neat things: an RF chamber, acoustic chamber (in a dedicated separate vibration-isolated building), a couple climate simuation rooms (humid, cold), a bunch of robot arms that open/close drawers or use touchscreens/keypads. (Here's a 5-min video tour [2] of it if you're interested.) Despite all that they were quite proud of their a massive inventory of paper from all over the world and testing they did with it. This included environmental (humidity/temp) testing after acclimatizing the paper for several days. They even went out of their way to get paper mills to custom create some of the crappiest papers they'd run across. I think the explanation was basically poor quality, rough paper leaves particles all over everything and causes rollers, drums etc to wear out faster. Depending on your usage, it's at least worth considering when you're buying paper and looking at saving a few dollars on the cheaper stuff. [1] https://garage.hp.com/us/en/business/boise-test-lab-hp-printers.html https://garage.hp.com/us/en/business/boise-test-lab-hp-print... [2] https://vimeo.com/242827801/8322d83960 https://vimeo.com/242827801/8322d83960

brudgers 6y ago
In 1992 I bought an HP Inkjet 550c. In 1994 HP sent me a roller cleaning kit and a floppy to run it. Basically a scotch pad scrubby for the paper pickup rollers. It was the last great HP product I bought. The sound it made was magical. It was still well working after ten years when I gave it to a non profit administrator who lacked a printer. The 600 series printers I specked and bought for the office in 1995 banshee howled by comparison...though nothing like a dot matrix.
harha 6y ago
Thanks for sharing, this looks like an interesting place. I understand that it's challenging, I just don't think it's unsolvable given there is sufficient of a market for people to complain. You won't get the same up to spec paper and humidity around the world, the printer should handle that and I think there are people willing to pay a premium on the hardware if they now it's going to play nice for the rare use in many years.

brudgers 6y ago

In 1992 I bought an HP Inkjet 550c. In 1994 HP sent me a roller cleaning kit and a floppy to run it. Basically a scotch pad scrubby for the paper pickup rollers. It was the last great HP product I bought. The sound it made was magical. It was still well working after ten years when I gave it to a non profit administrator who lacked a printer. The 600 series printers I specked and bought for the office in 1995 banshee howled by comparison...though nothing like a dot matrix.

harha 6y ago

Thanks for sharing, this looks like an interesting place. I understand that it's challenging, I just don't think it's unsolvable given there is sufficient of a market for people to complain. You won't get the same up to spec paper and humidity around the world, the printer should handle that and I think there are people willing to pay a premium on the hardware if they now it's going to play nice for the rare use in many years.