HP Forum Archive 20

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Hp 97 faint printer Message #1 Posted by Fouad M. Kaadou on 22 Sept 2011, 10:35 a.m. Hello HP Museum, I have an HP-97 with faint printing, what can I do to fix this? possibly a capacitor or resistor change. The printing is variable. Take a look. Thanks in advance, Fouad

Re: Hp 97 faint printer Message #2 Posted by Fouad M. Kaadou on 22 Sept 2011, 10:38 a.m., in response to message #1 by Fouad M. Kaadou If you don't see the pictures here are the links: Picture 1 Picture 2

Re: Hp 97 faint printer Message #3 Posted by Katie Wasserman on 22 Sept 2011, 11:08 a.m., in response to message #2 by Fouad M. Kaadou The two recommended fixes for this are: 1) Try new paper. You can buy it a most office supply stores or on-line. 2) There is a resistor (R8) on the 97 printer controller board that can be changed to control the print intensity. See page 2-4 of the service manual. From my experiments this doesn't have a huge effect, but some. Edited: 22 Sept 2011, 11:08 a.m.

Re: Hp 97 faint printer Message #4 Posted by Fouad M. Kaadou on 22 Sept 2011, 11:42 a.m., in response to message #3 by Katie Wasserman Hello Katie, I have tried different paper and have tried the same paper on my HP-41c printer and printing was excellent so I am pretty sure the paper is not the problem. I do not own the HP-97 service manual. Can you email me the necessary pages to do this resistor upgrade? Regards, Fouad

Re: Hp 97 faint printer Message #5 Posted by Dan W on 22 Sept 2011, 2:25 p.m., in response to message #3 by Katie Wasserman That really does look like the result of old paper to me. I would first try new paper. It could be a build up of some gunk on the print head I suppose. I have repaired a lot of HP-97 printers and they have all responded well to a good cleaning. I have never had to change the resistor. Take it apart, clean everything and rebuild it. The really good news is the paper appears to be advancing evenly, a common problem that is a bit more difficult to fix. Rebuilding the printer is intimidating at first but really isn't difficult. Get the technical manual from the museum DVD - it is an excellent investment and not expensive. Side question: Is there any source of modern blue printing thermal paper?

Re: Hp 97 faint printer Message #6 Posted by Fouad M. Kaadou on 22 Sept 2011, 3:23 p.m., in response to message #5 by Dan W Hello Dan, I have tested the same paper on a HP-82143a thermal printer for the HP-41c and it works fine. Could it be that the 82143a printer has just better printing power than the HP-97 and works better on old paper? I will definitely take your suggestion and try to clean the print head. Thanks, Fouad

Re: Hp 97 faint printer Message #7 Posted by Fouad M. Kaadou on 23 Sept 2011, 1:28 p.m., in response to message #6 by Fouad M. Kaadou Hello Dan, I have heard that staples sell thermal paper. How can I clean the print head? How do I get to it? Regards, Fouad

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