Epson Printer Phantom Paper Jam Fix

Epson Printer Phantom Paper Jam Fix

This blog is the second part of my tutorial on fixing Epson’s false paper jam message. You can watch my video about part one here. There are a lot of situations that can make your Epson printer think there’s a paper jam when there really isn’t one. There will probably be a few more parts after this since there’s no way I can fit it all into one.

The case for this phantom paper jam that we’re going to be looking at today is a bit strange. When you initially turn the printer on in this scenario, everything will seem fine in the beginning. It will even bring up the home screen, as it’s supposed to.

If you look closely, you’ll see that the small wheel inside the printer that loads the paper is still turning. It will load half of a page before stopping for apparently no reason and causing the printer to complain that there’s a paper jam.

Start by taking out the half-loaded piece of paper from the printer. In the last part, we talked about the possibility that one of your gears had popped out of place. This malfunction was causing the central wheel to fail to spin the others, causing the paper to jam. For the case we’re looking at today, the wheel is not the issue.

Check the printer sensor

The next thing we’re going to check is the sensor inside the printer called the Printer Eject Sensor. I want to start by taking a look at this from the back. You should see a small black lever behind the paper tray. When there’s no paper there, it should be falling into the slot vertically. This will block the light from the sensor, indicating to the sensor that there’s no paper.

When you’re having difficulties with a paper jam, you may need to pull this lever before doing anything else to ensure it doesn’t get damaged. If the lever does get damaged, you can go to our website and order another one.

Check for obstructions

Next, we’ll put a piece of paper through the roller to ensure no debris or obstruction is blocking the paper from getting through. You should also check to make sure that the timing belt is clean. If not, it can cause many assorted error messages to pop up.

Check the printhead lock

Another thing you should check is the printhead lock. The printer detects its position and movements relative to the zero location. The printhead lock determines this zero location, so if it’s damaged, then the printer might get confused. If it gets the location wrong, it causes the printhead to malfunction. I have another video on my channel about how to fix the printhead lock if that is your issue.

If none of these things seem to be the problem, then it’s time to take a closer look at the printer. I started by taking the top off so we could see the inner mechanisms better. For the specific case I used as an example in my video, I was still unable to find out what the problem was after searching for two hours. So trust me, patience is essential for this process.

Last-ditch attempt

Finally, I decided to press the orange stop key rather than the blue key that you would usually press. This action caused it to ask me if I wanted to do a fax report. I said no and it went back to the home screen again with no error message.

The small wheel began turning again and trying to load the next piece of paper. Before it could do so, I pressed the orange button again to tell it to stop. If it does spit out a paper, you can go ahead and take it away. When it comes to the home screen, and you can see the little wheel turning, press the stop button. Every time this happens, the fax report number will increase by one.

Eventually, I could get it to go to the home screen without turning the small wheel by repeating this process. Seeing that the problem went away, I put the paper roller back and attempted to print a regular page. Once your results seem to be working, power the printer off and on again to make sure it keeps working correctly.

I hope you found this blog post helpful and were able to resolve your printer issues. For more helpful tips, tricks, and tutorials, browse our blog at BCHtechnologies.com/blog. Happy printing!