Carriage jam error message

SOURCE: error - carriage jam message

My Photosmart 2610 just started having this same problem today. As many of you have done, I also went to the hp support website and tried just about everything. Finally I discovered the answer to my problem on my own. Here's what I did (you might want to have a wet rag handy to wipe the ink off your fingers):

1) With the printer on, I pressed "okay" to clear the error message. You should immediately hear the sound of the carriage (the contraption that holds the cartridges) moving inside.

2) Open the print cartridge access door (the main access point for the cartridges) and confirm that the carriage is indeed moving.
If the carriage won't move at all, I'm not sure that this solution will help you. However, if the carriage moves from side to side after you press "okay", please read on.

3) This is unorthodox, so bear with me: when the carriage moves away from it's "resting place" (in my printer it's on the right hand side) and is near the center of the printer, unplug the power cord from the printer. The purpose of this is to free up the undercarriage (which was the part that actually was jammed on my printer).

4) Ensure that the carriage moves freely from left to right and right to left by pushing gently on its sides.

5) Move the carriage to left side of the printer so you have room to access the undercarriage.

6) It might be helpful to have a flashlight or some other light targeting the undercarriage for this next part. If you look directly underneath the undercarriage, you should see a foam/spongy product resting in the base of the printer. The purpose of the sponge is to absorb any ink that escapes from the cartridges. Herein lies the problem: over time, as the undercarriage adjusts to enable the carriage and its cartridges to do their work, the undercarriage gets caught on the inky sponge. Note that the undercarriage is fragile, but is moveable by gently pushing it toward the front or back of the printer.

7) Adjust the undercarriage so you can see the sponge and the "axel" (for lack of a better term) that turns to move the undercarriage forward and back. It may take some detective work, but you should be able to determine where the sponge is supposed to lie. Your goal here is to push the sponge down as far as it will go so that it won't obstruct the movements of the undercarriage.

8) On my printer, there was also a small amount of sponge wrapped around the "axel" that prevented it from moving smoothly. I unwrapped it and double-checked that nothing else was obstructing movement.

9) Final step: leave everything where you moved it, shut the lid, and plug it back in. A little prayer never hurts either. Good luck! AIM ID if you need more help: GnarlyVeaux

SOURCE: How do I get fix a "carriage jam"?

I was able to run run a piece of photo paper through a couple of times and printer now seems to be working again. The theory was that running a heavy piece of paper through might help clear little piece of paper that was not visible. The photo paper is less likely to tear if it gets jammed too.

SOURCE: hp psc 1610 printer ... error message alternates between carriage jam and out of paper

i cleaned the clear file strip behind the carriage by rubbing it between my fingers and my printer started working again. before that i had paper jam and carriage jam and it wouldn't do any printing or copying.

SOURCE: carriage jam

Try this...

SOURCE: carriage jam

Sorry about the B.S., you can move the carriage by hand, and all you need is to clean the encoder strip that runs across behind the carriage assembly. You can wipe the strip gently with an alcohol swab or a Q-tip moist with alcohol. The bars on that strip tell the carriage where it is and grease or ink on it will give the carriage jam error. No calibration necessary after moving the head or cleaning the strip.