Repairs - HP OfficeJet 4630 (UPDATE)

 

Back in the 2014 I did buy the HP Office-jet 4630.

Nice machine and it worked flawlessly until few days ago.

Here how I fixed it.

To be honest the printer started quite some time ago (maybe a couple of years ?) to generate a muzzled sound when the display was on.

But no other symptoms were present so I just ignored it.

Recently I had a blackout due to a repair that required to cut off power from the main breaker.
This kind of interruptions can generate quite nasty burst of EMF over the line and the printer actually was NOT connected  to a surge suppressor.

So, to make a story short, when the power did come back, the printer didn't boot and started to report a list of errors (on the display).

The most common was  the code 0XB80003E8, but powering off and back on could generate other errors.

Initially I did try to follow the HP suggestions, however these instructions assumed the printer to start after the error visualization.
In my case the printer was stuck showing one of the errors, until after few attempts, it totally died, i.e. not even showing error codes on the display that remained blank.

So the diagnosis was quite obvious ... muzzled buzzing noise under load, totally died after an outtage = power supply dead.

So I did look for a replacement.
The power supply for the printer is a sealed box with the 110/240V input on one side and 3 pin connector on the other one, with +32V - GND - +12V

Btw, on the broken one I was able to measure the +32V but instead the +12V the power supply was just giving +5V.

So I found on eBay a new power supply and changed it.

Maybe one day if I have time I'll try to open the sealed broken power supply and try to see what went wrong, a post mortem.
If I'll some time to spare (I doubt it :) )

Voila' ... printer fixed.

UPDATE ! July 2023

The printer did went in fault again after another black out (removed power to repair an attic fan).
I had around another power supply but this time it didn't fix the problem.

I was able to restart it again after forcing the ink carriage to the right, I think some mechanical parts reached a critical worn out, so during the boot the firmware is unable to find some parts in the correct place.
To "fix" the printer the only way would be to replace all the worn out parts, it cost much less to buy a new one at this point.

UPDATE ! September 2023

As predicted the printer remains in constant error, probably due to some mechanical misalignment and thus I replaced it.
Anyway not bad 9 years working !