FREE!
A lovely word isn't it.
Free is the prefix to so many exciting idioms; Free Speech, Free Money, Free Lunch, and Free Love, are but just a few. However nothing quite sparks the imagination, or sets the heart racing quite like the thought of Free Parts!
Sometimes opportunity knocks, and chance delivers something wonderful and free. This time the chance of opportunity brought me an Epsom C1100 Colour Laser Printer!
A lovely word isn't it.
Free is the prefix to so many exciting idioms; Free Speech, Free Money, Free Lunch, and Free Love, are but just a few. However nothing quite sparks the imagination, or sets the heart racing quite like the thought of Free Parts!
Sometimes opportunity knocks, and chance delivers something wonderful and free. This time the chance of opportunity brought me an Epsom C1100 Colour Laser Printer!
Remove these ads by
Signing UpStep 1: Tools
To take a printer apart you will need the following;
There are two things you should know about the Laser Printer; One, it prints, so it has toner inside which can get everywhere, and two, it has a laser in it, which can render your eyes useless.
Don't disassemble the printer while it is connected to a power supply, or a Doctor might ask to start harvesting parts from you.
- A Screwdriver, or two.
- Needle-nose pliers.
- Side-Cutters.
- A Cardboard Box, or similar, for the big bits.
- The lid from an Aerosol can, or similar, for the small bits.
- A bin, for the unwanted bits.
- A bit of rag to clean off the toner.
There are two things you should know about the Laser Printer; One, it prints, so it has toner inside which can get everywhere, and two, it has a laser in it, which can render your eyes useless.
Don't disassemble the printer while it is connected to a power supply, or a Doctor might ask to start harvesting parts from you.
Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »
Just like the sidwalk outside Gorman's Chinese theatre with its stars, you can do some neat embedding, only don't do it to lay down, but stand it uP: maybe even make an entire wall! Indoor or outdoor. You can also do some gluegunning indoors on the wall all along the woodwork around all doorways in one room. Present the idea to a nearby restaurant or café, and let them pay you for the work to embellish their establishment. Take you maybe one day and they'd be amazed, including guests!
Art, man! That's my best idea for you.
You'll have to supply a small microphone, but use one of the motors to do a conical-scan to search for high-frequency wings. Use the laser to center-punch the insects. Use the remaining motors, gears, etc., to drive the whole assembly. Cut and fold parts for housings out of the sheet metal. Actually, cut wheels out of the metal as well and have the whole thing drive around and hunt the insects down...
The first comment to catch my attention was Peter.Steele's Opto-electronic bug zapper.
Superb idea, and one that stood out from the rest. There's a 3 Month Free Pro Membership waiting for you to zap up.
Next was an idea so far outside the box, that they were sticking things to the walls!
linny there is a 3 Month Free Pro Membership waiting to be hot-glued to your profile.
I like the many tips for using any kind of buckets and boxes. I do the same. In a lot of cases I keep the circuit board in one piece and do not solder the desolder the components, only at the moment I want to use them. For me it is well-organized in that way. Most of the time I remember the circuit boarsd better than the individual parts.
I know this printer has a webserver and first I try to save the processor board still working and look if I can get access to it.
I've still boxes full of parts too, I need to find a storage solution & fast!
uncle frogy
uncle frogy
uncle frogy
Make a coffee table with all of the gears arranged under a glass or acrylic top.
Idea 2: (This is what I actually have done)
Donate parts, especially the motors, but gears and wires also, to your local high school FIRST robotics team. My son is on his schools team, and he is always asking me for motors.
GO nutbag on printers, they have a varittable treasure trove of free bitz, better yet, go down to your local photocopier repair shop, chances are they've got DOZENS of unit's under the building that they don't want to pay to dump. Heavier steppers, clutches and PSU's, steel and cast gears, some have small gauge chains and sprockets plus a shite load of sensors, hall switches, and more mircro switches than one can point a sick at.
But rather than throw out the toner, mix it with some light oil like "singer oil" and hey presto... ferro fluid :)
Nice to see other's salvaging perfectly good parts and using them for things rather than dumping them in a big fk off hole because a new one is cheaper than the toner cartridge. ;)
Toner with magnetic particles vs just styrene and carbon will depend upon the manufacturer. A magnetic imaging drum is a good clue that the toner is also magnetic, or just test the toner itself with a weak magnet. A strong magnet will be difficult to clean.
Last, a word of caution when you are near toner- wear a mask and gloves. Toner is pretty much non-toxic according to MSDS (Materials Science Data Sheets) but it is a very fine powder and annoying.
The peculiar thing I find most valuable is resistors. They are the cheapest darn things, but having a drawer-organizer full of all the weird sizes, they're more valuable than anything else. In fact, the more general-purpose the component, the more valuable it is — voltage regulators, op-amps, and even transistors come in handy.
Gears are worst. I think it was a review of some gear-based robotics kit by the Mythbusters guys where they admitted to having a pile of gears that virtually never gets touched. It seems that every single one has a different pitch and pattern, and they require precise spacing to work properly. I'd love to hear how someone documents and mates gears because my box of them is on the brink of recycling.
I have not yet built with the gears of a printer. The linear motion assemblies are already built in the printers, it seems best to leave the rods and motors and gears intact. A computer interface is built into each printer to begin with. If single commands are sent to the print head motion assembly it is possible to move a print head back and forth in single step increments. This was true in the days of dot-matrix printers and at least one company published BASIC code to step their print head directly.
If we leave the mechanical assemblies and electronics connected, then it could be easier to just remount them into a CNC, cutter, etc.
Hope my .02$ was worth something to someone and generated some new ideas. :)
DIY-Guy
In commercial situations, it is necessary to handle the toner & parts in a specially designed booth, and to dispose of the powder according to regulations
Toner is a nusiance, I agree. But the MSDS sheets for the toners I looked up did not say it was carcinogenic. Can you tell me which toner brand is indictated to be toxic from the MSDS records?
I'd really like to know before I go back to disassembling with only a mask and gloves.
Thank you very much!
Upon seeing that many gears, I could only think of an ORRERY
I use more bins and separate: (comma denotes separate bin) gears sprokets rollers and spools, gear train assemblies, bushings and bearings,small hardware as screws, nuts, bolts, studs, spacers, washers etc.(because most are Metric), A/C-D/C motors and brushless motors, small steppers, large steppers, levers and mounting plates and structual parts as right angle supports etc., springs, belts and chains, wiring harnesses, sensors LEDs displays etc., Circuit boards (lots of electronic parts), rods bearing shafts etc. You get the idea.
A great source of printers are Salvation Army, check with local Boys and Girls Clubs, any place that takes donated stuff, they always have a bunch of junk and want to get rid of unusables. Do them a favor and take it all, usually for free just to keep them from having to throw in trash.
Bins for storage: I like empty plastic coffee and creamer cans and others that have a lid, just watch what you are throwing away. For larger pieces, I like the rubber totes with snap-on lids that can be bought for around $5, buy the small ones, because they can get heavy fast with a lot of salvaging. They can also be used to store the smaller containers, just label them.
What do you do with this bonanza of parts? Electronic experiments, robotics, any machine you can dream up. I scrap them back down also when I get through playing with them.