Printer jam

[mtbc]

I finally bought myself some A4 address label stock as I had difficulty persuading something along the printing pathway not to attempt to rescale for my American letter-size stock. The actual address printing is a simple PostScript program but the printer speaks PCL. I had something of a surprise when I tried printing from the manual feed tray and the label stock not only jammed the printer but seemed to wholly disappear even though I opened and peered inside every orifice.

In the end I did find a thin strip of the side of the sheet protruding underneath where the drum unit reposes. I just about managed to get enough purchase to tug the sheet back out. I solved the printing problem by setting CUPS not to default to duplex: even for the single-sided page the printer had tried to pull the sheet back in which I think is what caused the problem. All is now solved but there was a rather unexpected period during which I could not find the jammed page at all and even looked around the room to make sure I had not already removed it without noticing or remembering.

Comments

[wpadmirer]

Oh, how I hate the disappearing paper act. I'm good at puzzles, but damn, that's taking it a bit far.

[aldabra]

You may have been lucky; we had a printer at Oxford that would unstick the labels from the backing and stick them the other side up to the printing drum instead.

[mtbc]

I was indeed relieved to find that all the labels remained attached to the backing!