Where to get HP OfficeJet All in One repaired

[peterdwje2]

Has anyone gotten an HP machine repaired in Bangkok, and can recommend a place? HP says it no longer does repairs at its U-Chuliang bldg location, and I should take the machine to an authorized third party. Closest to me is IT City in Panthip, and they charge more than 1,000 baht simply to take the order, send the machine to HP, and then service/parts are additional charge.

I know it's not expensive to simply buy a new machine, but the problem is that the paper feeder does not work properly and I suspect the problem can be solved with easy adjustment.

Thanks.

[jimmybkk]

The issue you mentioned sounds like it could be a problem with the paper pick-up rollers, which is not uncommon with HP's - do a search on Google and there's no shortage of people complaining about the same thing. I had a similar problem with my OfficeJet 6500 and couldn't find anyone that would even attempt to fix it here in Pattaya. In my case it was caused by a hairline crack in one of the plastic sprockets on one of the stainless steel roller arms and HP don't sell spare sprockets.

If you don't mind taking on the job yourself here's what you need to do, but be warned - the fix that worked for me will almost certainly invalidate any warranty on the machine, so you may only want to try the same once you decide that there are no other options available.

You didn't mention the model # of your printer but if you have a removable panel at the back of the printer, take it off and shine a torch inside and you'll most likely see some steel roller arms and a fairly ridiculous collection of plastic sprockets/gears at one end. In my case there were 6 of these sprockets/gears all interconnected and just waiting for one of them to break to render the printer useless. I think the technical term for such an arrangement is "planned obsolescence". If you can reach a finger or screwdriver inside and try to turn the rollers manually you may be able to identify which one has the problem, but HP have carefully located this collection of sprockets in a particularly hard-to-access position.

If you search online some people have managed to fix their problem using flashlights, long handled inspection mirrors, soldering irons and the like, and so you may want to give that a go, but for me that was way too fiddly and I don't have the patience required, so I flipped it onto it's back, got my Dremel out and cut a hole in the bottom of the printer, and from there it was a piece of cake. Here are some pics showing the hole and the sprockets:

Once I could access the sprockets it was a lot easier to identify the cracked one (6) and could see it had slipped along the roller arm and was not connecting with the other sprocket (5) as it should, which meant the paper was not being picked up and fed into the printer. I was able to glue the cracked sprocket back in place with superglue, and used a bulldog clip to hold it tight whilst the glue dried. (The pics show the sprocket after it was glued back in place) It worked like a charm - I made the repair around 6 months ago and cutting the hole in the bottom has had no ill-effects on the printer whatsoever - it's still going strong to this day...

Incidentally, if you're not doing so already refilling these HP OfficeJet cartridges is not hard and can be quite a saving:

http://www.printerfillingstation.com/Refill-Instructions/HP/H44.htm

I hope this helped.