Simple tips to cut down on the "blank-sheet" syndrome.
Whether it's a report for the office or a term paper for school, you want your hard work to shine when other people see it. If you're an old hand at using laser printers, you probably stop to flip through the pages of a document before you staple or bind it, looking for blank sheets of paper. One laser printer failing is their tendency to spit out blanks in the midst of your printed pages --- and not because you included a blank page in your document.
Instructions
1. Check your paper stock. If it's curling from humidity or yellowed from aging on a shelf, get a fresh ream before you start your print job. Moisture and age cause paper to misfeed on the way through a laser printer's complex paper path and the high heat it uses to fuse toner onto the surface of the paper.
2. Fan your paper before you load it in the paper tray. Fresh out of the wrapper, sheets of paper tend to cling to one another, which in turn can cause them to misfeed. Hold onto your stack of sheets in one hand and flip through them at one corner with the other hand, as if you were viewing the pages of a flip-book animation. This quick step releases the sheets so they print more readily.
3. Load the paper tray, but don't overdo it. One of the leading causes of paper misfeeds and unintended blank sheets is too much paper in the paper tray.
4. Keep your printer well fed. Too much paper isn't a good idea; too little is just as bad. Let your paper tray run down close to the end and you're all the more likely to see stray blank pages.
5. Watch out for vertical paper loading problems. If your laser printer is a small-footprint consumer desktop model with a paper "tray" that's more like a vertical slot, any problems with paper quality can be magnified by the feed mechanism's tendency to clump sheets together.
6. Don't shut off your computer while you're in the midst of printing a document. You may wind up having to shut off the printer as well to stop its flow of blank sheets.
7. Check your consumables. If the toner cartridge in your printer has run dry, it can't print, so you'll see blank sheets instead of printed ones.
Tags: paper tray, blank sheets, laser printer, your paper, Check your, flip through, much paper
