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.

vs

I think it’s time for me to buy a decent printer. I’ve been using cheap printers for years, and it’s getting old.

For several years, this was my routine:

1. Buy a new cheap inkjet printer for ~$30
2. Use it until it completely ran out of ink
3. Look up the cost of ink cartridges (about $50 for color + black)
4. Whine to my friends and family about how buying ink costs more than buying a printer
5. Throw the printer away
6. Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Eventually, I found out that the ink cartridges that come with printers are not nearly as regular ink cartridges that one would buy to replace them. I also kept feeling guilty about throwing away printers that still worked– mainly because it’s bad for the environment (I’ve since learned that there is a designated place at the county landfill for computer hardware. I didn’t know about it back then, though. Not that it matters, throwing it away is still throwing it away, even if they’re just handling the trash differently.).

A few years ago, I got a Dell J740 printer, bundled with my Canon PowerShot S50 digital camera, as part of a very hot deal. The printer was not top-of-the-line, by any means, but it was much better than the $30 ones I had been using previously, and actually printed photos very well.

Unfortunately, when I ran out of ink, I could still not justify spending about $75 for replacement ink cartridges. It was actually a Lexmark under the hood, but it was branded by Dell, and had modifications that made it so Lexmark ink cartridges would not fit properly. So, pricing on the ink cartridges was controlled exclusively by Dell. I didn’t throw this printer away, though, because it really was great for printing photos. I kept it, in the hopes that eventually I could find a good deal on Dell ink cartridges.

However, I never really bothered looking for Dell ink cartridge deals, because I ended up buying another, similar, printer around that time. I was a fanatical Target clearance deal seeker at the time, and, with the help of the Target Clearance Deals thread on Fatwallet, picked up an Hewlett-Packard (HP) DeskJet 3820 for pretty cheap. It was the only one they had left at my Target store, and it happened to also be an open-box returned item. I think I figured out why it had been returned, later on.

The HP printed photos pretty well, but not quite as well as the Dell. The HP ink cartridges could at least be bought from various stores, though, so that became our primary printer for a long time, until just recently. Over the course of its lifetime, though, it did have a few issues, one of which was terminal. So, it’s dead now. I will go into that in more detail in my next entry.

So, I’m looking for a new printer, again. I saw a couple printers on clearance at Target, recently, for pretty cheap:

• An HP PhotoSmart A310 Compact Photo Printer for $24.98 (50% off)
• A Lexmark X1240 Color All-In-One (printer/scanner/copier) for $17.38 (50% off)

I was tempted to buy them both, but decided to do some research first. So, I snapped some pictures of them (linked above), so I could look up reviews online, from home. The reviews I found, for both of these printers, were almost all bad. I was still tempted to buy them, because they were dirt cheap and would probably get me by for a while, but I held off on that.

On a subsequent visit to another Target store, I checked out the printers on clearance, and found this one as well:

• An Epson CX5000v All-In-One (printer/scanner/copier) for $67.98 (15% off)

When I looked that one up, the reviews were much more favorable. But, I couldn’t justify spending $67.98, at the time, so I held off on that, as well.

I decided to do some research on the HP 3820, to see if there was some way I could fix it. I was able to find tons of information about this problem, and various solutions that others had used. I will be posting some more about that in an upcoming entry. For now, you can check out my del.icio.us bookmarks tagged with printers, hp, repair, and diy.

Sooo. At this point, I’m leaning towards buying a slightly better printer than I’ve bought in the past. From all the reviews I’ve read, recently, Epson seems like a good brand to go with.

If you have any suggestions for a quality color printer that prints text and photos well, doesn’t go through ink excessively fast (a common complaint with Lexmarks), and might actually last a long time, please leave a comment below! Extra points if it also functions as a scanner/copier[/fax].