Canon 2550s paper will not feed

[gwizzit]

My printer is only just out of warranty(!).
It was fine yesterday ... today the paper will not feed . Lots of banging noise as the paper feed bar tries to pick up the next sheet, but it does not succeed.
The feed bar is thrown in/out many times (hence the noise). watching it without paper in the upper rollers seem to be turning OK and they do meet the idlers fixed in the casing, I cannot see clearly what happens with paper in there, but it seems the same?
If I "assist " the feed, the paper WILL enter, gets picked up by the lower rollers and it prints OK.

I have had the unit apart and cannot see anything obviously wrong, no broken parts and turning the driven gear (with the motor removed) I can see all the gear linkage turning and the pick-up rollers move into the correct position ... and since the paper feeds/prints once it reached the paper sensor (a "trigger" breaking a mag field or maybe a photo beam - not sure as I didn't remove that switch/sensor) I guess the problem must be in the initial pick-up, but I am not familiar with the printer mechanism so I am not sure what to look for.

If anyone can give me a clue it would be greatly appreciated!

 

[gwizzit]

My printer is only just out of warranty(!).
It was fine yesterday ... today the paper will not feed . Lots of banging noise as the paper feed bar tries to pick up the next sheet, but it does not succeed.
The feed bar is thrown in/out many times (hence the noise). watching it without paper in the upper rollers seem to be turning OK and they do meet the idlers fixed in the casing, I cannot see clearly what happens with paper in there, but it seems the same?
If I "assist " the feed, the paper WILL enter, gets picked up by the lower rollers and it prints OK.

I have had the unit apart and cannot see anything obviously wrong, no broken parts and turning the driven gear (with the motor removed) I can see all the gear linkage turning and the pick-up rollers move into the correct position ... and since the paper feeds/prints once it reached the paper sensor (a "trigger" breaking a mag field or maybe a photo beam - not sure as I didn't remove that switch/sensor) I guess the problem must be in the initial pick-up, but I am not familiar with the printer mechanism so I am not sure what to look for.

If anyone can give me a clue it would be greatly appreciated!

UPDATE:
I am nothing if not persistent! A further inspection revealed the problem.

There is a "gearbox" that controls the paper feed rollers. Inside this gearbox there is a cog with a pin that attaches to the crank arm that pushes the pick-up rollers onto the paper stack.
This cog has some "cams" on its shaft that are regulated by a "spring". This "spring" is a plastic lever which is part of the chassis of the gearbox... and the base of the arm has a slight CRACK (!) such that it no longer exerts enough pressure onto the cams to stop the cog at the designated points, allowing the cog & cam to continually rotate. This causes the pick-up rollers to continually bang against the paper stack, but fail to collect a sheet.

The idea of the gearbox is that the motor drives it first in one direction to collect a sheet, then, as the paper passes over the sensor (mentioned above), the motor is reversed, the roller drive disconnected, and the forward rollers take over and drag the paper through past the print heads.

I have emailed Canon to see if I can buy a new gearbox/chassis and will post a further update when I hear back from them.

Meanwhile if anyone knows where I can get one, or has a suggestion about repairing the broken "spring", please let me know!

P.S. I don't know if I am just unlucky and this is an uncommon problem ... but I would hazard a guess that the gearbox is a common component in the MG series (maybe others?) so this may apply to more printers than just my MG2550s !

 

[gwizzit]

SOLUTION:

OK, It took a while, but I have fixed it, at least for now ... we'll see how it goes.
The fault was as I described above, and I have uploaded "MG2550S Fix.png" to show what I did in case it is of use to anyone else.

Meanwhile, I will await a reply from Canon ...

 

[gwizzit]

Final word on the subject:
Canon replied - a very nice email that gave me a contact at their repair centre in Woking (UK) (not to far away), which with a bit of luck should have some spares. So I will make contact in due course and get a replacement part.
It's good to know that these things ARE serviceable! ... and I still like Canon!!