HP Photosmart C4780 "out of paper" issue

[ImWolf]

The C4780 worked fine till about a month ago when I started seeing "out of paper" messages even though there was plenty of paper loaded. At first, just pulling back and re-loading the stack of paper would solve the issue...   not any more.

At the moment I cannot print (or copy) anything....   always reports there is no paper.

Problem came to a head last night trying to print a doc I really needed. Ended up trying all the recommended fixes online....  after every fix attempt the printer still reported no paper. Eventually I found myself staring through the back access panel of the printer while running the Paper Feed Cleaning utility. There is a single wide rubber roller on the left side which initially moves a sheet of paper forward.....   this roller is on a gear driven spindle, driven by another gear of equal size, which is driven yet again by a 3rd gear of equal size. The mechanism crawls along during this clean cycle.

At this point I had also tried feeding a sheet of paper into the printer with my armstrong power feed attachment.....  🙂

Just the edge of the paper touching the periphery of the wide rubber roller was enough to stall the mechanism all.

From a mechanical viewpoint, it looked like something was really clogging up the paper feed roller/gears/other? So I took it out to my shop, yanked the print cartridges, and blasted the innards of it with high pressure air through every orifice I spotted!!! When I got it back into my office and hooked up, first thing I ran again was that Paper Feed Cleaning utility which I had already run a dozen times......   to my amazement the paper feed roller was moving fast.....     then the cycle stopped and just the rear rollers turned a while....    and then as before, all the rear rollers turned simultaneously..... 

The paper feed roller slowed to a crawl again......     my efforts thus far (which is many hours worth) are all for not!

Unless someone here has some great ideas I've not yet heard about, next thing on my list is wrenches and screw drivers.... (hey, if I need to call it junk and replace it, I'm gonna destroy it first)

Thanx for any input,

Wolf

[Betty0610]

@ImWolf

Welcome to the HP Support Community.

If all steps have been performed from here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-photosmart-c4700-all-in-one-printer-series/3794613/model/379..., I recommend you to contact the HP Support Team regarding this as this could be a hardware issue.

Link: www.hp.com/contacthp/

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Let me know if this helps.

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