Careful with mylars

Here is a very common cause of jams in Automatic Document Feeders (ADF). All ADFs that I have seen from all manufactures have sheets of plastic called mylar stuck in the paper path to help guide paper over various rollers. These mylar sheets may be completely stuck down but mostly are glued down at the front edge and the trailing edge flaps loosely usually ending at the leading edge of a roller. The engineers who designed the copiers add these to to prevent the leading edge of the paper from running into the side of the roller and buckling against the roller instead of smoothly running over top of the roller.

However, sometimes the ADF jams and the user tries to remove the paper by grabing the trailing edge of the paper and pulling it back out of the ADF the way it went in. If there is any creases or holes in the paper the paper may catch on a mylar and then drag the trailing edge of the mylar back up the paper path. This is called a flipped mylar.

Now when paper is fed through the ADF the paper will hit the flipped mylar and jam. If your lucky the paper may force the mylar back to where it should be but often a technician will be called to fix the mylar.

I can just use a spring hook or tweezers to gently pull the mylar back into place but care needs to be taken not to do any more damage. Folds and creases can be flattened out but tears and holes will lead to the mylar needing to be replaced.

So if your ADF jams then you should first try to pull the paper out of the ADF in the direction that the paper would normally be fed. If paper needs to be pulled back through the paper path then please keep the mylars in mind and be careful.