Pro 3800 won't feed from manual rear tray

[pkk]

Hello All & thanks in advance for the help.

My Pro 3800 has suddenly stopped feeding from the manual rear tray. The message is " Paper out or not loaded correctly." There is no mechanical movement of the rollers before this appears. I did have a paper jam in there a few months ago but I thought I had printed from that tray since. Not sure about that. It prints normally from the sheet feeder.
Thanks again

Pkk

 

[john3322]

Hello pkk,
These problem mostly you are experiencing could be caused by a communication breakdown between the printer and the computer.

Try These steps, may be your problems will resolve;
1. Check your cables and their connections. Reconnect the parallel or USB cable to the computer and to the printer. Make sure there is a direct connection, with no scanners, switchboxes, or hubs inline. Other devices can sometimes cause communication problems between the computer and printer. For more information on this issue, see 'Scanners and Other Devices' below.
2. Remove the power supply cord and reattach it to the printer. The printer should make a noise soon after the power cord is reattached.
3. If you are using a parallel port, verify that your computer is set up for bi-directional communications. If bi-directional communication is not enabled on your computer, the parallel port mode setting in the computer CMOS setup will need to be set to either bi-directional or ECP.

 

[pkk]

Hello pkk,
These problem mostly you are experiencing could be caused by a communication breakdown between the printer and the computer.

Try These steps, may be your problems will resolve;
1. Check your cables and their connections. Reconnect the parallel or USB cable to the computer and to the printer. Make sure there is a direct connection, with no scanners, switchboxes, or hubs inline. Other devices can sometimes cause communication problems between the computer and printer. For more information on this issue, see 'Scanners and Other Devices' below.
2. Remove the power supply cord and reattach it to the printer. The printer should make a noise soon after the power cord is reattached.
3. If you are using a parallel port, verify that your computer is set up for bi-directional communications. If bi-directional communication is not enabled on your computer, the parallel port mode setting in the computer CMOS setup will need to be set to either bi-directional or ECP.

Okay I tried that. No help. The printer does work fine from the sheet feeder. I'm thinking I could have damaged something when I cleared a paper jam a few months ago. Does anyone know how the printer detects the paper? Is it a mechanical switch or an optical one?

Pkk

 

[john3322]

Okay I tried that. No help. The printer does work fine from the sheet feeder. I'm thinking I could have damaged something when I cleared a paper jam a few months ago. Does anyone know how the printer detects the paper? Is it a mechanical switch or an optical one?

Pkk

Yes may be these is the cause.

 

[berttheghost]

@pkk
The PE sensor is used to detect paper present in the rear manual bypass. (I'm not sure that that info is useful, however.) Ensure that the media is inserted far enough so that the PE sensor sees it, and that there isn't anything blocking the paper path.

This might sound stupid, but are you 100 percent absolutely sure that the rear manual bypass was selected in your printing application and not the ASF or front manual bypass? Can you determine from the printer lcd that the rear manual bypass selection was received by the printer?

What error message do you see on the printer lcd?

You might try various flavors of resetting and reinstalling your printer driver. Be sure to save your printer settings, profiles, etc.

 

[pkk]

Okay the plot is thickening. First the above questions. Tes the manual rear was selected. I did not see that on the lcd though. You don't usually get a message about the feed tray on the lcd. But as I was putting paper in the manual rear tray it decided that there was a paper jam & i got that message on the lcd. This is the first time I've seen that. Also I can slide the paper much farther into the printer before it stops. But there is no apparent paper jam. The printer was working fine from the sheet feeder. So I rebooted the printer & now I'm getting "service call error 1224, call service center" on the lcd. I sure hope I can fix this. I've got a lot of printing right now.

Pkk

 

[berttheghost]

Okay the plot is thickening. First the above questions. Tes the manual rear was selected. I did not see that on the lcd though. You don't usually get a message about the feed tray on the lcd. But as I was putting paper in the manual rear tray it decided that there was a paper jam & i got that message on the lcd. This is the first time I've seen that. Also I can slide the paper much farther into the printer before it stops. But there is no apparent paper jam. The printer was working fine from the sheet feeder. So I rebooted the printer & now I'm getting "service call error 1224, call service center" on the lcd. I sure hope I can fix this. I've got a lot of printing right now.

Pkk

See this thread: http://www.printerknowledge.com/thr...paper-feed-misalignement-epson-pro-3800.6060/

It may, however, be a 'simple' matter of a foreign object in the paper path holding the lever out of position. Take a flashlight and check the position of the paper sensor lever mentioned in the other thread. Perhaps @pharmacist can point out where to look.

You might try power cycling the printer again after removing any paper in the feeds.

Think twice before opening up the printer. Then think about it some more. Get a copy of the service manual (available online, but not from Epson). Study any procedure carefully and don't attempt it until you understand it fully. Don't attempt to disassemble anything that you will need tools that you don't have to reassemble and adjust.

I'm sorry that this isn't going well. Good luck.

 

[pkk]

The message on the lcd keeps changing. At one point after a complete reboot I had "ready" as in ready to print. But it wouldn't do anything at all. Now I have the "load paper" message back. I'll try reloading the driver.

 

[pkk]

okay, it's fixed. I found a little remnant from the paper jam I had a couple of months back. Since I hadn't printed from the manual rear tray all that time it didn't cause any problems. But when I started poking around it interfered with the sheet tray too.
Thanks to all for the support.