Troubleshooting Fax Machine

Fax Machine

Fax machines are complicated pieces of equipment with delicate sensors, motors and finely calibrated moving parts. As much as you might want to kick your office fax machine when there’s a paper jam, there are other solutions. Here are some troubleshooting tips for the most common fax problems:

Incoming and Outgoing Fax Machine

You may be facing fax machine problems while sending and/or receiving faxes. You can start resolving these fax machine issues by:

1 – Checking the telephone cord to which your fax machine is connected.

2 – Connect a standard telephone to the incoming telephone line and check for the dial tone.

3 – If it is working OK then reattach the fax unit to the telephone line.

4 – Be sure to make the proper connections using proper fax ports and give another try.

5 – Check whether the wall jack, which acts as a junction in the system, is functioning properly or not. Replace it, if you find it faulty.

Quality and error of Fax Machine

Image Quality

Quality of the faxes printed at your end, may not be up to the mark. It may be that the image quality of the printed pages of the fax, is too dark or too light to read. You can try to resolve these fax machine issues by:

1 – Changing the density setting on your fax machine.

2 – Check whether you have successfully solved the problem or not by doing a fax test. If it is ok, then the sender of the fax may be having problems with his own fax machine.

3 – If you are the sender of the fax, then clean all the surfaces, including the glass of the scanner component and rest of the moving parts of the fax machine thoroughly, by opening the document feed compartment of the fax machine.

4 –  The leaking toner or ink of your fax machine may be the cause of dirty prints. Open the printer door of your fax machine and make sure that the ink cartridge is working properly and the toners are properly fitted and are not falling down. If the problem is with the cartridge, replace it.

5 – paper getting stuck inside the machine. It may be in the document feed compartment or in the printing compartment of the fax machine. One way of troubleshooting this problem, is to pull the paper gently in the direction in which the paper moves, whilst the machine is in the operation.

In some cases, you may find that everything is fine tuned, but you are receiving lots of messages informing you of communication errors. Inform your telephone company which may check your telephone line for interference and can successfully solve the problem.

Error Signal

If the fax machine signals an error, check the manual or call the manufacturer to see what it means. If you get a lot of communications errors, make sure the phone line is plugged in all the way and that you hear a clear dial tone through the phone receiver. If not, you might want to call the telephone company and have them check your line for interference.
The emails and efax or Internet fax services have changed the way we used to communicate. These facilities are replacing fax machines very fast. But there are still individuals and businesses that rely on fax machines in their day-to-day affairs. If you are one of them, then you could solve the commonly faced fax machine problems listed above on your own. The best way to avoid such problems is to service your fax machine regularly and use quality spare parts produced by the manufacturer.