spugbrap’s blog

As previously mentioned, my HP DeskJet 3820 printer worked pretty well, for a while, but had a few issues over the course of its lifetime:

• It was suicidal! When we first bought it, it kept trying to push itself off the shelf where it sat, whenever we printed anything. The problem was that the clipping mechanism that usually kept the back panel securely attached, was broken.

  I think this may have been why the printer was returned–whoever bought it probably broke that piece, and then returned it, claiming that it was like that already. Why the people at Target would put it back on the shelf in that condition, though, is questionable. Perhaps the person who returned it did not bother to mention that it was broken, so the customer service people at Target did not notice. It was not something obvious–really, it required plugging it in and printing something to see that there was a problem.

  Anyways, we ended up using electrical tape to keep the back panel on, and the printer was happy again. No more jumping off the shelf.

• It had trouble letting go. I don’t think it did this from the start, but at some point it started having some paper feeding trouble. After printing one page, it’s supposed to completely spit out that page, before feeding the next piece of paper in and printing the next page.

  It had some trouble spitting out the printed pages, though. So, if you were printing multiple pages, you had to stand there and grab each page when the printer attempted to spit it out. If you didn’t, it would start feeding the next blank page in, while still hanging on to the just-printed page, and this would cause the just-printed page to pull back inside the printer and get crumpled up.

  When I looked for official HP support on this subject, I found a couple of relevant paper-jam support pages, but these tips did not help me resolve my paper feeding issues. Here are the pages, though, in case they might be useful for solving someone else’s HP DJ 3820 paper feeding problems:

  HP Deskjet Printers - Preventing Paper Jams on the 3800 Series Printer

  HP Deskjet 3800 Series Printers - Fixing Paper Jams

• It recently became paralyzed. A few weeks ago, the printer started going nuts, and this error message popped up on the computer screen:”Mechanism Error. The print cartridge cradle cannot move. Please check under the device’s top cover for a paper jam or other obstruction.”There was no paper jam, and no visible obstruction.

  I tried pushing the various cryptic buttons on the front of the printer, which seemed to all have flashing lights next to them. I tried opening the front cover, pulling out the ink cartridges, putting them back in, unplugging the printer and plugging it in a couple minutes later, and so forth. Nothing fixed the problem.

  At some point, during this process, the cartridge cradle did move across from the right side (where it was supposedly stuck) to the left, and back again, but then it gave me the same error message again.

So, was it time to buy a new printer? Or was it simply a matter of needing to clean/lubricate something inside the printer? I googled for the error message, and found several useful sites. Apparently, this is a very common problem, with HP DeskJet 3820 printers, and many resourceful geeks have successfully repaired their own printers.

I found some forums, where people posted their own questions, answers, and links. Here are a couple of relevant threads:

• HP Deskjet 3820 - fixyourownprinter.com
• The HP 3820 problem - fixyourownprinter.com

From there, I learned that the “mechanism error” is caused by a buildup of ink in a chamber inside the printer. During normal printer operation, the printer is constantly cleaning the print heads, and the excess ink goes into this chamber. The ink dries, there, and over time a large buildup of dried ink forms. Eventually, this mass of dried ink gets in the way of one of the gears, and causes the gear to break. This is when you will most likely start seeing the dreaded “mechanism error”, if you haven’t already.

I don’t remember some of the details, but when I read about all this, I was left wondering whether my gear was already broken, or if I might still be able to prevent it by cleaning out that ink chamber. I decided to take the printer apart and find out. I figured there was no harm in trying, since the printer was already useless to me in the error state that it was in.

Thankfully, several people have written detailed, step-by-step, illustrated guides to repairing an HP 3820 that is having the dreaded “mechanism error”. Here are some of the ones I consulted:

• Oprava HP DeskJet 3820 - this page is from the Czech Republic, and the instructions are not in English. However, there are a lot of useful photographs that help to bridge the language gap.
• Ma 3820 fait du bruit - this set of instructions is in French, and spans 7 pages or so. The photographs are pretty good, but I felt like the words were necessary to complement them. So, I ran each page through Google Translate, an automatic stastical translation service, and was able to understand most of the instructions.
• Google translation of “Ma 3820 fait du bruit” - Google’s automatic translation did help me to understand a lot of these instructions (along with the photographs), but some of the translation was just horrible! For example, throughout the instructions, they kept referring to the “food”–a very important part of the printer, apparently. It took me a while, but eventually I realized it was talking about the power supply. :)
  Note: I just took another look at the translated pages, and they actually look a lot different now than they did a week or two ago. No mention of “food”, anymore, and a lot of the instructions seem a lot more readable. There are still a lot of things that do not make any sense, but it’s pretty cool to see that Google Translate is constantly evolving!

One of those forum threads pointed me to another set of instructions (this time actually in English). While this initially seemed useful, it got a bit too technical for me part-way through–referring to parts I was not familiar with–and the photos were not as good as some of the ones on the Czech and French instruction pages.

By referring to all three of these instruction pages, I was able to take my printer apart. The ink chamber was quite a mess! I took some pictures, to add to the collective body of photos of HP 3820 guts. I’m not sure if these photos will be of any value to anyone (especially since the lighting and focus are not ideal), but here they are:

Photos of my broken HP DeskJet 3820 printer

I tried to clean the ink chamber, but it was just too much to deal with. Plus, my gear was indeed broken (see photos). So, I decided it wasn’t worth dealing with, anymore. I was not motivated enough to try and do a very thorough cleaning, and getting a replacement gear is bit of a hassle, since you have to order them from overseas.

All in all, it was fun reading the fixyourownprinter.com forums, and taking the printer apart, but now the printer is history. Now, I need to decide whether to buy a new printer, or buy more ink for my Dell J740 printer.