This is a late night intrusive thought I had. I feel like it would depend on the printer and type of printer but I’m wondering how messed up it would get.

Edit: Answer below

https://leminal.space/comment/4833795

  • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    10 months ago

    If it is really thin sandpaper and high grit, it may not do anything for a pass through or two, though thicker and lower grit ones would be more likely to press up against components and scratch them to hell. I would expect the printer to still work, though the print quality would probably decrease and it may have a harder time feeding paper.

    • aard@kyu.de
      2·
      10 months ago

      You’ll get different results depending on the printer type, though. For example, that kitchen paper would work in a inkjet printer (as in, would get pulled through, but you couldn’t read the result), and work perfectly in a dot matrix printer. I know the latter as I used to print, err, learning aids on paper handkerchiefs with my dot matrix printer in the 90s. A few times teachers were suspecting something, in which case I’d just use it to clean my nose, and toss it. Nobody ever was curious enough to continue their investigation afterwards.

  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
    31·
    10 months ago

    Assuming the paper didn’t just jam immediately:

    You would add a lot of wear and tear to the rollers, depending on the grit of the sandpaper. Which would likely increase paper feed issues long term.

    And ink/toner would likely “stick” to varying levels.

    • aard@kyu.de
      2·
      10 months ago

      For an inkjet printer with paper feed issues pulling it through a few times might actually fix those - the print head should be far enough away from the paper that it will not get damaged, and there shouldn’t be other parts close enough. I’ve prolonged quite a few inkjet printers life in the 90s by just sanding the rollers a bit (in some cases you could even get maintenance kits from the manufacturers - which just would be an overpriced tiny piece of sandpaper).

      In a laser printer I’d be worried about some of the internals, though.

  • T4V0
    1·
    10 months ago

    That’s a thought that occurs to every HP printer owner…