On a TITO floor the ticket printer is the machine’s cashier. When it fails, the patron cannot cash out, the machine locks up waiting, and the attendant is writing a handpay slip. Ticket printers are actually simple devices — a thermal head, a transport, a cutter and a handful of sensors — and their failures cluster into five patterns. Learn the five and you can fix the large majority of printer callouts on the first visit.
Failure 1: Paper jams
Symptoms: ticket stalls mid-print, concertinas inside the transport, or the printer faults immediately on a print attempt.
Common causes: damaged or damp ticket stock, a torn fragment from a previous jam still in the path, debris or adhesive residue on rollers, a guide set for the wrong stock width, or a worn transport roller that no longer grips evenly.
Fix: power the machine down before opening the transport. Remove the stock, open the head/transport per the manufacturer’s procedure, and remove every fragment — a sliver of ticket left behind guarantees a repeat jam. Inspect rollers for wear and residue, clean per the manual, reload with fresh stock, and run test tickets. Repeated jams after a clean reload point at roller wear or a misaligned chassis, which is bench work.
Failure 2: Blank or faded tickets
Symptoms: ticket feeds and cuts normally but prints nothing, or barely visible print.
Thermal printers only print on the coated side of thermal stock. A completely blank ticket that otherwise feeds fine is very commonly stock loaded with the thermal coating facing away from the head, or non-thermal/wrong-spec stock. Faded or patchy print points at a dirty print head, a worn head, or head pressure/energy problems. Faded print on one edge only usually means uneven head pressure or a misseated head.
Fix: confirm the stock is correct and loaded coated-side-to-head (the quick field check for which side is coated: a fingernail or coin dragged firmly across thermal coating leaves a dark mark). Clean the print head with the manufacturer-approved method — typically isopropyl-based head cleaning materials, applied with the machine powered down and the head cool. If cleaning does not restore print, the head or its drive electronics are suspect: bench or swap.
Failure 3: Communication failures
Symptoms: the game reports a printer comm error, cashout locks up with the printer apparently idle, or the printer drops offline intermittently.
Common causes: the printer not fully seated on its docking connector (very common after a stock reload — the printer slides on rails and must click home), a damaged harness or bent connector pins, power supply problems, or a firmware/protocol mismatch after a printer swap.
Fix: reseat the printer firmly on its rails and retest — that alone resolves a remarkable share of comm faults. Then inspect the harness and connector pins, verify power at the printer, and if the fault followed a printer swap, confirm the replacement matches the expected model, firmware and protocol configuration for that game. On IGT floors, comm faults surface as specific codes — see the S2000 error code reference.
Failure 4: Bad cuts and wrong ticket length
Symptoms: tickets tear raggedly instead of cutting clean, cut mid-print, come out the wrong length, or two tickets emerge joined.
Common causes: a dull or obstructed cutter, debris in the cutter mechanism, wrong stock specification, or the printer failing to register the black index mark (TOF mark) on the ticket stock — the mark sensor is dirty, the stock’s marks are out of spec, or the stock is loaded so the marks face away from the sensor.
Fix: power down before going anywhere near a cutter — the blade mechanism can actuate and it is sharp. Clear debris, clean the index-mark sensor, verify the stock is the specified type loaded the right way round, and test. Persistent ragged cuts mean cutter wear: replace the cutter assembly or swap the unit per your house practice.
Failure 5: Sensor and status errors
Symptoms: paper-out reported with stock loaded, paper-low never reported until it runs dry, ticket-taken never registering so the game holds in a cashout state, or phantom jam reports.
Printers monitor their world through small optical sensors — paper presence, paper low, index mark, ticket taken at the bezel. Paper dust from thermal stock settles on all of them. A soft brush and manufacturer-approved cleaning of each sensor window is the fix for most phantom status errors, and it belongs in your routine preventive maintenance, not just in fault response. If cleaning does not clear a sensor fault, check the sensor harness, then swap the unit for the bench.
The habits that prevent printer callouts
- Store ticket stock flat, dry and in its packaging until use — damp or edge-damaged stock is a jam factory.
- Use the specified stock, always. Bargain stock with out-of-spec coating or index marks costs more in callouts than it saves.
- Make “reseat until it clicks” the trained standard for every reload, and dust sensors during refills.
- Log printer faults per machine. A printer that faults weekly is a swap candidate, not a re-clean candidate.
The printer is one station in the machine’s money path — the same sensor-transport-media thinking applies to bill validators and coin hoppers. Master all three and you own the money path end to end.