Is the OFFICE JET PRO 9018 A junk printer? I cannot get any help from HP. 2 new units same problem

[RSO100]

Carriage--How do you unlock a carriage that has never had ink installed and has not moved at all -- new.

[ShlomiL]

Hi,

Did you follow the steps and power on the printer? the carriage will only move once the printer prompts to insert the ink cartridges, not before.

Please follow below steps to set up the printer and check if that may help:

https://support.hp.com/my-en/document/c06200147

Shlomi

[async01]

Yes. The Office Jet Pro 9018 is a junk printer. The drive mechanism has plastic gears and one of these in particular has a really bad habit of cracking. Probably substandard plastics to save a few cents on each unit manufactured. This initially manifests itself as a "paper jam", but the end result is the carriage gets jammed at the right side of the unit, never to move again. Further, the printer is not serviceable. One would think you could replace or gorilla glue the gear and fit it back onto the drive shaft, but HP doesn't offer replacement parts and the printer is built in such a way that it is impossible to put the gear back on even if you wanted to. You could call tech support, but they'll ask you to do things like "clean the print head" and "print a test page". Nothing they suggest can fix the issue because it is a physical design flaw (feature?) and if they fix it, you wouldn't have to buy a new HP printer.