Short Answer: Yes!
Personally and professionally, a jam while printing a document annoys me. When my customers experience a jam, it upsets me too.
Of course, those of us in the office printing industry strive to improve the performance of our products, but there are things you can do to help reduce paper jams in any printer or multifunction printer (MFP).
Paper causes most printer jams
The condition of the paper is the largest single reason for continual paper jams. Static electricity and humidity play a big part. In dryer climates, paper sheets sliding across other sheets build static electricity causing mis-picks and jams. In the paper packaging process, the paper is cut using a very large knife or guillotine. At the edges, sometimes the paper curves over the next sheet again causing multiple sheets to be picked. To minimize both of these effects, fan the paper before loading it into the paper tray. Fanning helps reduce paper sheets from sticking and breaks some of those cut problems.
It goes without saying that mishandled paper will also cause issues. You have some sheets lying around with dog-eared corners or that have been folded once or wrinkled. Don’t use this paper in your printer. When I find paper like that in our office, I stick it in my notebook and use it for scratch paper. (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!).
Follow directions/specifications
Different manufacturers have different instructions on what types of paper to use and a recommended paper weight range. This is important. Your printer or MFP is designed for a specific range of paper thickness. Supported paper and speciality media specifications are listed for each Xerox product on the product support pages. If you are printing on paper outside this range, it usually doesn’t hurt the printer, but the results may be frustrating.
Check out some other tips to avoid paper jams at Xerox Support (select your product and then Support), Computerhope.com, the 10 best tips to prevent paper jams in printers and PC World on how to fix and avoid printer paper jams. Share your tips or ask us a question.
Have a (paper) jam-free day!
