Facsimile or fax machines, once only used by big businesses, are found in millions of homes and home offices. They are inexpensive and most can double as a telephone. And they are relatively trouble free. When one does decide to act up, threaten to fix it!

How Does It Work?

Canned air is useful for cleaning dust and paper particles from a fax machine.

A fax machine is an electronic device that scans a paper image and transmits it by modem to another fax machine.

A document fed into a fax machine passes over a device containing a single row of light detectors. The device scans the page, producing an electrical signal of varying voltage that represents the dark and light parts of the page. The pattern is sent along a telephone line to the receiving fax machine that decodes the signal and translates it into an exact image, a facsimile.

The two types of fax machines, plain paper and thermal, are distinguished by the paper they use. A thermal fax machine contains a thermal printer with heating elements that prints rows of dots on a roll of heat-sensitive paper. A newer plain-paper fax machine contains an ink-jet or laser printer to print a copy of a document being sent to it.

What Can Go Wrong?

Either type of fax machine contains few serviceable parts. Routine maintenance, however, will help avoid most problems. The best course of action is to use quality supplies and periodically clean the machine.

Fix-It Tip

The first thing to check with a problem fax machine is the incoming telephone line and connections. If in doubt about the incoming line, plug a standard telephone into the phone plug on the wall and listen for a dial tone.