Why does my printer keep jamming? Check the paper before you call anyone

A customer of ours had a machine that jammed week after week. We had been through the rollers, the trays and the settings more than once, and the fault kept coming back. What finally fixed it was not a part and it was not a service call. It was the paper. They switched to a better grade of stock, the jamming dropped off almost entirely, and nothing else about that machine changed.

I have watched that pattern often enough over thirty years in this business that it is the first thing I now ask about when a machine keeps jamming. So this month’s pro tip is the one a reader can test the same afternoon: do not buy the cheapest paper in the building.

What cheap paper is actually made of

Paper is made bright and cheap the same way, by loading the sheet with mineral filler, most often ground calcium carbonate. The filler itself is not the villain. Good paper carries filler too. The difference is the grade.

Low grade filler has large, irregular, sharp edged particles across a very wide range of sizes, and commercial low grade filler can carry impurities, including quartz. Every sheet that passes through the machine drags those particles across the feed rollers, along the paper path, over the drum and through the fuser. It is a slow sandpaper. The parts that are meant to last a hundred thousand pages wear early, and the machine starts to behave like an old one long before it is.

Why that turns into a jam

There are two separate things going on, and it helps to keep them apart.

The first is wear, as above. Rollers that have been abraded lose the surface texture that grips the sheet. The second is dust. Cheap paper sheds fine particles as it is cut and as it runs, and that dust settles on the surface of the feed roller. A feed roller works on friction. Coat it in a fine white powder and the friction drops, the roller slips on the sheet, and the sheet either does not move or moves late. On your screen that shows up as a paper jam. Inside the machine it is simply a roller that could not get a grip.

That is why the fault comes back after every service visit. Cleaning the roller works for a week. The paper puts the dust straight back.

The thirty second test

Open the paper tray and look at the surfaces around it. Look at the output tray, the guides, the flat surfaces just inside the feed path, and the lip of the tray itself. If there is a fine white dust sitting on them, the paper is telling on itself. You do not need a technician to see it and you do not need to take anything apart.

If the dust is there, the jamming is very likely the paper, and the fix is a different ream rather than a different machine.

What to buy instead

You do not need premium stock. You need a proper copier grade with a stated weight, usually twenty pound or seventy five gram, from a reputable mill, and a smooth finish. The difference in price between the cheapest multipurpose ream on the shelf and a decent copier grade is small on a case and invisible against what a machine costs to run. What you are paying for is a tighter, cleaner filler and a sheet that does not shed.

Two habits help as well. Keep the ream sealed until the tray is going in, because the wrapper is a moisture barrier and not just packaging. And keep paper off the floor and away from anything that gets warm.

The honest arithmetic

Paper is the cheapest reliability upgrade in the building. A better ream costs a little more, and it costs less over a year than a single service call. It does not matter whose machine you run or who looks after it, this holds.

On our managed print agreements we will still tell you this, and we do, because a machine that does not jam is a machine our team does not have to visit and an office that does not stop. That is the whole point of the service.

It isn’t to say that every jam is the paper. Worn rollers, a bent guide and the wrong tray setting all cause jams too, and a machine that jams on good paper needs a technician. It is simply that the paper is the first thing to check, because it is the cheapest to change and it is the one nobody suspects.

Which paper is in your tray right now, and did anyone choose it on purpose?

Adam Smith, Uptown Business Machines, White Rock, BC

Sources

Metrofuser, on how low grade paper shortens the life of a laser printer and how to stop it

Epic Powder, on calcium carbonate fillers and paper performance

Yamauchi, on copier and printer paper feed and transport rollers