Free Flatbed Scanner by LOG

So this Lazy Old Geek likes to save money.

Important Tip: Here is a tip on how to get a free or nearly free flatbed scanner. Lots of people buy all-in-one printer-scanner-fax machines. Many of these people get rid of them for one of two reasons. One, the printer portion fails to print.  Printers have a lot of mechanical parts to handle the paper. Mechanical parts are high failure items in electronic products. And there’s the printing to the paper stuff. Two, the ink cartridges are too expensive.
The scanner portion in this type of all-in-one is pretty much separate from the printer and it is usually still working for two reasons. One the scanner isn’t usually used very much. Two the mechanics are much simpler.
So you can usually pick up a used all-in-one from friends wanting to get rid of one, garage/yard sales, thrift stores or computer repair shops. Flatbed scanner is preferred.

USE:Flatbed scanner: Well, I already have a scanner in my all-in-one (see third picture) but it is a paper feed version. It is very hard to copy paper smaller than 8.5x11 like pictures, DD214s and stuff that doesn’t bend.
My cousin had this printer-scanner that stopped printing so she gave it to me. I just hooked it up and was able to scan in all of the above.

Scrounger: So I am a scrounger so I decided to pull out most of the printer mechanism, motors, steel shafts, gears and such. If you try this, be careful as some parts are necessary to prevent getting an error message. I had to reattach some of the cartridge holder stuff.

Bonus 1: If the all-in-one has fax support, you should also be able to send and receive faxes. This one doesn’t.

Bonus 2: This one had a multi card reader for like SD cards and such. It still works.