View Gary Lacey's profile on LinkedIn



Sunday 19 January 2014

HP LaserJet P4015 – Not Picking Up Paper

Update

HP now recognise this as a manufacturing fault and have issued a service note for it. They will send you a new fuser free of charge but only until the end of 2010.

See here for more details:

HP LaserJet P4014, P4015 and P4515 Printer Series - Slow printing or No printing from Tray 2
This was an interesting fault. The paper fed normally from tray 1, the multi-purpose tray at the front.  When trying to feed from cassette tray 2, the printer would run for about one minute and fifteen seconds before the paper was picked up and fed into the printer. It took around five or six seconds to pick the paper up from tray 1.

I didn't have any idea what was causing this, apart from perhaps messed up settings, but luckily, the printer was still in HP's warranty.

A lengthy session of fault diagnosis on the telephone with HP's support agent in India followed. He had me change the deault paper size to Letter and the tray 2 paper type to any type. This had the expected result, it made no difference.

He then got me to update the printer's firmware to the latest version. I thought there was slight chance that this might fix it but it didn't.

I then had to email him the printer config page. I suspected that this was just to confirm that I had actually done the previous steps.

About a day later, he phoned me to say he was sending me a new fuser to fit in the printer. I thought this had as much chance of fixing the printer as the previous steps of changing the paper size and type but I've been surprised before.

Today, about a week later, the fuser arrived. I fitted it, which only took a minute. Powered the printer on, waited fot it to go ready, looked at the clock and did a test print.

I was expecting the second hand to go round past a minute but it printed almost instantly.  Not believing this was the fix, I refitted the original fuser. Did another test print and got tired of waiting after two or three minutes, I took my eye off the clock and lost time, and turned it off. Refitted the new fuser again and it printed instantly.

I don't know the theory behind this, but it fixed the fault. Picks up paper straight away from tray 1 but takes over a minute to pick up paper from tray 2. If the man was stood next to me and he said replace the fuser, I would have laughed in his face. Good job he wasn't stood next to me.

It will be interesting to see if this is a common problem with this printer or if it is just a one off. Time will tell.

When you replace the fuser, don’t forget to update the firmware to the latest version, if you haven’t already done it, to prevent the new fuser failing with the same fault. The firmware can be downloaded from hp at www.hp.com/go/support . Select Download drivers and software (and firmware) in step 1 and in step 2 type in the printer name, LJ P4014, LJ P4015 or LJ P4515.

Update

It does seem as though this is a fairly common fault with this printer, although it's not yet recognized as a manufacturing fault by HP.

I've just had the second P4015 with the faulty fuser causing the printer to take a long time to print.

This time, it took over three minutes to print from both tray 1 and tray 2. I checked the settings and found tray 1 had been configured for A4 plain paper. The default setting for tray 1 is any size and any type. With the default settings, it desn't take so long to print from tray 1 because the engine runs slower and the fuser doesn't have to heat up to a higher temperature.

This time, the call centre guy didn't know what the fault was so I told him last time we had this problem, they sent us a fuser and it fixed it. He sent me a new fuser and it did repair the fault again.

Just to let you know, if your printer is out of warranty, it's actually cheaper to purchase a 1 year post warranty Care Pack than it is to buy a new fuser. This extends the warranty by twelve months. You might find you still have to wait a while for the fuser, they were out of stock the last time I needed one.


*There are affiliate links in this post.*

Hewlett Packard LaserJet P4015 Fuser
Hewlett Packard LaserJet P4015 Fuser

CB506-67901 - Fusing Assembly - For 110 Vac

CB506-67902 - Fusing Assembly - For 220 Vac

3 thoughts on “HP LaserJet P4015 – Not Picking Up Paper”


This symptom is indeed a fuser problem. The printer is waiting for the fuser to indicate that it has reached the proper temperature before feeding paper. If the fuser can not get hot enough, there is no sense sending paper and toner through; dumping the unfused toner into the printer will eventually cause more damage.

Stephen
The problem is related to the Firmware, if you replace the Fuser and do not update the Firmware the new fuser may fail.

admin

Hi Stephen, thanks for that info about updating the firmware. I’ve edited the post to make sure people know.
 

2 comments: