I have an Oki 810 laser printer and it keeps saying that there is a paper jam in the exit tray. I've tried to clear this jam, but after removing the drum and toner cartridge, I find that I'm unable to access the rollers which feed the paper to the exit path.

I was finding this printer to be quite good for printing emails and other things over our home network, but since it has stopped working, I have spent a large amount of money with my ink jet printer and cartridges to do the same amount of work.

Can you provide any help as to how to check out and solve this problem?

(Originally posted February 2003)

Paul A, Everton Park, QLD

I'm still using a 1980's laser printer called a Newgen, so I shouldn't really say "that's quite an antique you're using there".

Out of interest, it isn't a Laser printer, but a LED printer. Instead of writing the image onto the drum with a laser beam, it uses a strip of light emitting diodes (LED's).

Your paper jam problem may not be a paper jam at all, but simply a malfunction of the sensor which is meant to detect a paper jam. Or it may be a tiny corner of a sheet of paper caught somewhere. Or it might be that junior ran a sheet of sticky labels through and one of them got stuck.

Sometimes you can check the paper path by removing the drum (and keeping it in a dark place) and hand-feeding a sheet of paper through the various parts of the printer where there might be an obstruction. But I guess you've already tried that. I once cleared a jam by cutting a piece of A4 paper into a triangle, passing the point through first then once I could see it, I grabbed the point and wiggled the rest of the sheet through. But I've also seen a laser printer that had a doozy of a paper jam -- it had a complete overhead transparency wrapped around the fuser roller, and welded irremovably in place. Let;s hope that isn't it!

By all means contact Oki and see what help you can get. It might take a phone call to Sydney but I'll bet you get some advice that will help you get it going again. The phone number is (07) 3856 2200 in Brisbane and (02) 9690 8200 in Sydney.

Good luck (and please let us know how you fix it).

Paul Zucker