Laserjet 500 color M551 folded corners

[jb143]

Hi,

My laserjet M551 has started folding the leading corners of the paper. The folds are print side out and are approximately 2cm across the leading edge and 1cm down the side.Any advice on how to stop this?

Thanks.

[bluI_1528]

One thing that will help narrow down the area of concern is a half self test.

Place a piece of paper in the manual feed tray (tray 1) and print a configuration page. As the paper feeds into the printer about 3/4 of the way open a tray or top cover. (which ever is easiest) This will stop the paper half way through the printing process.

Carefully pull the paper out towards the rear of the printer. Careful, as the toner has not been fused and will smudge and transfer to your hands. Do you see the folds at this point? If so, can you swap out the toner cartridge and print again to see if it resolves it? If not, the issue looks to be the fuser.

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Thank you.

[jb143]

Thanks for that. It looks like it is the fuser, though when I take it out I can't see anything in the paper path. I'll get a new fuser and hope that fixes it.

Thanks again.

[DJOMCSE2000]

I have a simliar issue. What I ended up doing first was determine whether the fold was happening before or after the toner or fuser. To do that, I printed a page that had toner close to the edges. That way, if it was occuring before the toner, there would be toner on the folded corner. If it was after the toner cartridge, the toner would be covered by the fold. What I found was that the paper was being folder before hitting the toner cartridge. I then found that it was only happening from tray 2 and not tray 1. So, what I would do, and it took several tries because not every page would get folded, was to run a test page and when I would hear the paper from tray 2 start to get pulled, I would open tray 1 to stop the print process with the paper just starting to get pulled through the machine. I eventually found where it was getting folded. There is a bar that goes across the paper path in the back, about two inches, maybe less, above where tray two feeds into the paper path. Tray 1 does not feed through here, but rather, up higher. The plastic bar is about 1/2" square and goes left to right. I haven't yet found an exploded view of this area to identify the part, but it's where the corner is getting folded. I am going to look at it deeper and see if I can find what is catching the edge of the paper. Good luck!

[DJOMCSE2000]

OK, here is an update. The part that the paper is getting folded in (as it passes through) is the registration assembly. Using the service manual, I tore it down to get a better look inside. There is nothing in the paper path that I could see causing this. I'm about to call HP on this one. The printer is less than two years old and should not be having such an issue.

I'm interested to hear what they have to say, if anything.