Why Paper Jams Persist | The New YorkerMidway through the printing process, the paper was supposed t
Why Paper Jams Persist | The New YorkerMidway through the printing process, the paper was supposed to cross a gap; flung from the top of a rotating belt, it needed to soar through space until it could be sucked upward by a vacuum pump onto another belt, which was positioned upside down. Unfortunately, the press was in a hot and humid place, and the paper, normally lissome, had become listless. At the apex of its trajectory, at the moment when it was supposed to connect with the conveyor belt, its back corners drooped. They dragged on the platform below, and, like a trapeze flier missing a catch, the paper sank downward. As more sheets rushed into the same space, they created a pile of loops and curlicues—what the jam engineers called a “flower arrangement.”“It’s the worst-case scenario,” Erwin Ruiz, the leader of the paper-jam team, said.I found this piece on paper jams surprisingly interesting. Especially the people who spend their lives engineering away the obstacles in printers and copiers. -- source link