Low Mileage Lexmark Optra R+ Feeding Paper Crooked?

[houseisland]

Help!

I am not a printer guy at all. I do minor stuff on HPs because I have to -- my own ignorance here frightens me, though.

My wife's old, but low-mileage (<14K pages), Lexmark Optra R+ has started feeding pages ever so slightly crooked.

I have given the printer a quick once over and can see nothing obviously wrong, except that some of the rollers inside look a little glazed. I haven't tried cleaning them, yet.

The printer is clean inside. No dirt in the paper path. The (one only) paper tray looks good -- tension seems OK.

Does anyone have any suggestions here?

Printer Techies, if I send this beast out to be repaired what might I be looking at in repair bills?

[KWB Teck]

You are more than likely looking at a broken pre-alingment bell crank, not a very expensive part. Probably about 1 - 1.5 hours labor from a service center.

Considering the condition and page count of your printer, well worth the investment.

[houseisland]

Thanks.

I think I am looking at this problem through the wrong end of the telescope.

The paper feed is probably OK. I have checked this out quite thorougly now.

Perhaps it is the printed image which is out of alignment. At the top of the page on the right the image is about 1.5 mm higher than on the left, with the situation reversed at the bottom. It is my understanding that this alignment is configured through printer diagnostics. If it is an image alignment problem and adjustments do not hold, it could be expensive. Perhaps a circuit board is failing.

[KWB Teck]

Coinsidering that the printer has not displayed this symptom untill now I'll stick with my original diagnoisis. Had it been a head alignment problem it would have exibited this sympton the entire time.

It takes a little understanding of how the paper path components are using in the process of registration and feed to see how the bell crank is used for paper alignment.

Even though the paper appears to be feeding through the printer in a straight fashion. Trust me it's not and dosen't have much tolerance for any skew in the paper.