One of the happier aspects of owning a workshop with machinery and lots of bits and pieces, etc etc is that you can do repairs that the average guy in the street can't get to first base on.
Hewlett Packard make some very nice A3 laser printers, and we have a small selection (they ain't small, they are nearly a cubic metre!) We can laser print an A0 drawing legibly onto A3 paper with these printers, they are really good.
One is a nearly new one and the others are cheapos, bought for spares.
They all have the same fault which sends them to the skip: the paper feed path gets distorted by damage to the rear door locating pins.
To access the paper path and clear out jams, the whole rear panel of the printer hinges down, and carries with it the paper diverter that directs the printed page to one of two destination trays. As this whole assembly is part of the paper path it has to line up pretty accurately with the main body of the printer and the incoming and outgoing paper paths.
HP put two tapered plastic pins into the diverter body moulding, and they locate into two holes in the main steel chassis of the printer. The diverter assembly is doweled onto the back door. There is a lot of slack in the back door pivots.
So, to clear a jam, you open the door, the door drops down a tad, you clear the paper and close the door, except that the pins take the brunt of aligning things up again as it closes, and eventually being plastic they break.
New diverter is £80 plus VAT and carriage.
To fix it permanently, two nylon spacers off the shelf at the factory, five minutes work trimming the remains of the plastic pin support flange, and two accurately positioned M5 clearance holes in the rear door to take a couple of stainless pan pozi screws to hold the spacers. Reassembly is about 10 minutes.
Job done for less than a fiver.
Peter
-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk