Made the mistake of using WD 40

[ramirezi]

Hello there. I made a huge mistake and sprayed inside my printer with WD 40. It makes this strange noise when it pulls up the paper so I thought, why not just oil it up a little. The sound continued. I thought, maybe it needs more so I added more. Then I tried to print. Oil everywhere. I tried to clean up all the excess oil and waited a week to print (thinking it just needs to settle).

I know, I know. I really had no idea it's a big no no. After all, isn't WD40 like duct tape? Works on everything? I guess not.

My printer will print but it has some wobbly text here and there. Is there a way I can clean the printer back to the way it was? I looked for a replacement of this printer but it's very old and very expensive just for refurbished. If anyone has some advice (other than to yell I used WD40) it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Wobbly print - I'm not familiar with the hardware of HP printers but could imagine that they are not that much different to printers of other vendors. It appears to be likely from the use of WD40 that the coding strip got a greasy overcoat and the head positioning does not work anymore. There should be a small gray plastic strip across the width of the print path and passing through a sensor in the printhead. This strip would need a clean up e.g. with a window cleaner.

 

[PeterBJ]

Could you upload a scan of a text document, for instance Windows Printer test Page, showing the defect?

My guess is that some WD 40 got onto the encoder strip, so you could try to wipe it clean with a soft tissue paper. The encoder strip is a transparent strip with markings that are read by a sensor in the cartridge carriage.

I see Ink stained fingers has the same suggestion as I and posted while I was typing.

 

[ramirezi]

Wobbly print - I'm not familiar with the hardware of HP printers but could imagine that they are not that much different to printers of other vendors. It appears to be likely from the use of WD40 that the coding strip got a greasy overcoat and the head positioning does not work anymore. There should be a small gray plastic strip across the width of the print path and passing through a sensor in the printhead. This strip would need a clean up e.g. with a window cleaner.

Could you upload a scan of a text document, for instance Windows Printer test Page, showing the defect?

My guess is that some WD 40 got onto the encoder strip, so you could try to wipe it clean with a soft tissue paper. The encoder strip is a transparent strip with markings that are read by a sensor in the cartridge carriage.

I see Ink stained fingers has the same suggestion as I and posted while I was typing.

I wasn't able to scan a page on the printer since HP Support Assistant no longer works. But I was able to clean the printer and everything is back to normal. Thank you so much for your help. You saved me hundred's of dollars to buy a new one and making the mistake of throwing this one away.

 

[PeterBJ]

Thank you for the feed-back.

 

[Stuart21]

Wobbly print - I'm not familiar with the hardware of HP printers but could imagine that they are not that much different to printers of other vendors. It appears to be likely from the use of WD40 that the coding strip got a greasy overcoat and the head positioning does not work anymore. There should be a small gray plastic strip across the width of the print path and passing through a sensor in the printhead. This strip would need a clean up e.g. with a window cleaner.

Clean the sensor strip - naptha (lighter fluid) or metho, Then print ten or 20 pages, se if any improvement -

 

[RWL]

After all, isn't WD40 like duct tape? Works on everything? I guess not.

Actually it can become an awful lot like duct tape. Rather than scolding you I'm going to anticipate the next problem you might have. WD-40 becomes gummy over time. Your printer is working again so I wouldn't do anything at the moment. Further attempts at cleaning could make something worse, but *IF* a year from now you start to have mechanical problems, it may be that residual WD-40 is retarding some mechanical function. The odds are in your favor that nothing more will happen, but if they do, you know where to look. We did use WD-40 back in the dot matrix printer days though. If you sprayed the ribbon with WD-40 you could extend the life of the printer ribbon. Then came Canon's monochrome bubble jet printers with immortal ink cartridges and printer heads that killed the dot matrix printer market.