It is very frustrating when your printer won't pull the paper through anymore. I'm not talking about paper jams or mechanical probelms. What I am talking about is when the roller does not seem to grab the paper enough to feed it through properly. The paper just slips off the roller so to speak and eiter does not get pulled at all, or only half way creating a jam.

The rubber roller gets worn down eventually and becomes smooth. That's why it can't 'grab' the paper. I actually have three printers like this sitting in my office right now. There is nothing wrong with them besides the paper not feeding.

One day, the same thing started happening to the copy machine, so the copy repair man came by and changed a bunch of rollers.

Trying to change the rollers on a small individual printer is not worth the cost of installing new rollers. Chances are you cannot even find the pieces to buy anyway.

So, how do we get those smooth rollers to grab the paper again?

First off, the simplest solution is to try to clean the rollers of dust. If you can access the rollers, especially while they are spinning, this would be best. Get a damp cloth either with water or rubbing alcohol and wipe the rubber down, and retest your machine.

If this does not work, as it did not in my case, we have to go a little bit further. Now the MacGyver in me came out on this one. I figured that if I could get the roller sticky enough to grab the paper, it would work fine. But I didn't want to make it too sticky and not let go, or leave glue on the paper after it touched the roller or something. So I started looking around the office and found my answer!

Post-It notes!

Take your post-it note and rub the sticky side on the roller. I'm telling you it works. I just fixed three printers this way. You have to press hard enough for the stickyness of the post-it to come off. The roller will now be stciky enough to grab the paper. It should last a little while. Mine still works and it has been at least one hundred printed sheets passed through so far.

Strange, but I totally fixed my printer with two post-it notes!

Let me know if this worked for you.