loud thumping and gear grinding noise

[ajsdisc]

Totally agree with some of the other comments, stay well clear of the 5520 printer, it is one of the worst printers ever. It has made the heavy gear brinding noise from day one. As an engineer myself, this is not right and only a matter of time until the printer fails. Second HP printer I have bought that is simply awful 😞

[Mattuk]

If only someone from HP would say...The reason it does this is because............but I think it is a design fault which they do not want to make public..  

[Mattuk]

Come on HP experts....thats if any experts monitor this board.  Please explain what the problem is ..even if a customer cannot actual do the fix.....  Would be good PR for you......

[Oldkayu]

After few months the printer have this problem when I began print photo using 4"x6". I have dismantle the gear mechanism and find out the position was wrong. I did corrective with reposition the trigger and the shaft back. But somehow it comes when I print photo using 4"x6" size again. Now is understand the gear hardware have manufacturing problem. It have wrong firmware fitting to it. I’ll have to dismantle it again. But for now I leave a lone. The gear will give away soon if not fix it. Is hard way to dismantling. You have to open all top cover including the LCD panel. Remove ribbon cable as well. This 5520 is rubbish printer. Don’t buy HP again.

[Mattuk]

So are you saying the small trigger that the cartridge assembly pushes against when it goes to the cleaning station is on the wrong position or which gear did you adjust to overcome the problem.  I did a firmware update but it made no difference.

[dnjn]

I ended up just recycling the printer.  The next printer I bought was an HP but this time I got an extended warranty because the last two printers broke shortly after the one year warranty was up.

[MACH_Computers]

You are indeed right with what the issue is (I've currently got one of these in for repair at the moment with the exact same problem). 

Moving the band to the left or right will not alter the postition of the carriage as it moves sadly. If you look closely at the band you will see loads of barcode like lines which the carriage counts as it moves so the printer can work out whereabouts along the rail the carriage currently is. These lines extend out past the limit of where the carriage can move so that it doesn't run off the rails so to speak with its known position. 

Someone else did mention that pushing the carriage slightly to the left as its starts grinding stopped the noise and I can confirm that this is the case. The carriage 'should' move approx 4-5mm to the left just as the cleaning mechanism reaches the front of its travel to disengage the gear which moves it forward, but it simply doesn't do this. Why the printer suddenly starts doing this when it has been fine previously is something I can't explain at this moment but it seems like a firmware update is needed with the program for print head cleaning altered slightly to reflect the need to move the print head to the left slightly to stop the skipping of the gears. 

I'm trying to find an alternative solution as we speak. If i do find one I will certainly update this thread with my 'fix'

[Mattuk]

I was the person who mentioned about the test where I moved the print head a small  amount to stop the problem. I did a firmware update ( ver  MGP5CN1444AR ) I am not sure if this is the latest verion or whether HP are not bothering to help anyone.. If you do find a solution I would be most interested...

[MACH_Computers]

I have done a firmware update on the unit to whatever was the latest that it could find (off the top of my head I couldn't say which one it is as I'm out of office at the moment) suffice to say though that it didn't make a blind bit of difference.

It's frustrating that you and I both know what needs to be done with the program for the cleaning cycle but neither of us (I'm presuming you can't obviously) have the facility to modify and create a new firmware revision for this printer. Such a simple alteration would save a lot of users a lot of money and would make this printer an overall great unit.

As far as time before failure, some people have mentioned new units doing it after a few printouts whilst the unit I have in at the moment is reporting ~5000 pages printed before this started happening. This is what baffles me as to why it's suddenly started it. It's been fine up to now so why start doing it after such a long period of time considering.

[Mattuk]

Sadley I don't know how to alter the firmware. My printer had also done many hundreds of printouts before this started. There was no pre indication of this happening and the cartridges had not been changed. I have even tried to put a small piece of springy foam at the end of the travel to offer some small resistance when the cartridge reaches the right hand side to see if the foam would help to move the head back. It almost worked but did not have much time to play with it. There is quite a large amount of white cog specs laying around in the botton where the cog keeps jumping, so I was waiting to see if anyone had any updates befroe I try some more.  Regards....