EEVblog #1302 - Scrapping a Dumpster Laser Printer For Parts

hi it's dumpster room parts Salvage time again as I often find down in the dumpster room the corporate office tower dumpster and gives up fantastic things like this which is a real were like a big beefy corporate office full color printer in this case it's a Dell 5130 CD in for those playing along at home and it's a huge beast weighs over 30 kilos or something it's absolutely enormous one of these like really reliable high-end office printers I don't know about this particular model but anyway these wouldn't have been a cheap to buy and yes it does actually work but there's lines on the page and yes I could probably spend like hundreds of dollars buying new drums for it and things like that but I've already got a color printer i don't need a big power-hungry huge beast like this taking up a room in the lab especially when i'm downsizing the lab you could sell something like this but you can't post it because it's ridiculous so you'd have to like i'd have to sell it on gumtree or something like that really cheap or just give it away or something that couldn't be bothered so let's tear this thing down and see what usable parts that we can get through our junk bin inside a big full color laser printer like this now I'll link it down below and at the end if you haven't seen it where I've done a photocopy earth and I had the same black matte because this is gonna get messy toners just gonna go everywhere I'm gonna be covered in it but I think I've ever done a full-color you know big high-end office laser printer like this we'll see how many usable parts we can get out of it before we go I'll just show you what we've got here it's one of these full-color they're jobbies it's got the four toner cartridges like how do you get these things out mm anyway it's got the four different color turn the cartridges it's got the four different color drums in there so likely the lines that we get in on the page have to do with the drums but it's all messy there's all you probably see inside there there's all toner it's just a it's just a real mess I don't and this is the the toner dump tray and stuff like that so it's it's had a fear a bit of useless poor things so I don't really want to press this back into action not sure how old it is but anyway so it does actually have the ethernet on there it's got an old-school R sentronics as well and there's the details for those playing along at home so let's tear this piece down see what's what there we go power supplies massive check that out Wow takes up the full height that's worth the price of admission on its own tada that's nice just comes out as one big assembly it's clips are annoying that's the main processor check it out looks like there's a tamper protection micro switch on there for taking out the back our processor board that's interesting I'm pretty impressed with the wiring inside this thing you can tell they've put a lot of effort into our design in the construction of this well the cable looms look at that fantastic there but this is the mechanical linkage through the this is the power switch button on the front panel and that goes all the way back through the Shazi you can see the rod down there oh boy spared no expense really spectacular spared no expense I am impressed how this all fits together huge amount the mechanical engineering designs going into this it's absolutely phenomenal I tell you what I hate to be the poor bastard he's got to swap this board maybe these things aren't designed to be repaired I don't know if you're aware would somebody from Dell would you tell me and come around he's devil shirt fixture printer for you I don't know do they have a company soul like IBM we'll do one verse and two choruses of ever onward on page 5 of the songbook [Music] I'm a part of like the jam with waterways and no bill these things are bloody cable-tied unbelievable tell you what though this is rather satisfying and be a bit more careful with this if I was I had to put it back together of course top yep Bob's your uncle that nice magnetics down there wow I have a good look at those later but to goldmine that power supply and here's the problem with these machines I mean look at the toner just gathering in there look at that Wow stuff just gets everywhere I mean they can't 100% see all these things so there's nothing you can really do not sure these are motors in here I think they're all interlocking cogs for all the four drums it's that's what drives the four drums in there me so it synchronizes them all up of course and there we go if I spin that sucker it's a reduction gear thing sorry if I'm getting my mechanicals incorrect I'm not sure if they're they're all the same or whether or not this is some sort of slight synchronous difference but it wouldn't be good for anything else don't know if the motor would be any good as this your motor driver can we start getting into the weirdos stuff like this I'll show you those up close later start getting in that I've got four motors up here five and still got another mongrel down there which refuses to come out yeah you can strip out most of the good stuff from the back here which is really quite nice here's where we start getting into the paper feed the output paper feed there's our motor in there oh that's just gorgeous oh just the feel on that the weight I wish this was feel a vision and the deeper and deeper into this you get the more impressed you get with all the gears and cogs and everything that somehow went yeah that way they're like that so that's all part of the paper feed mechanism I mean there would have been like whole teams just working on like the output paper path team or something like that yeah it's just it's just incredible I'm always blown away by the design complexity of products mechanical products like this it's absolutely amazing now yeah that cogs not coming out without a fight there we go look at that it's the complexity that goes into that alright and then these thing to these move and engage like a lot of it's built from the back so there's got that all yeah all your drives it looks like they're all on this outer surface out here which is absolutely fantastic and then they slot in in the gears slot in can't even comprehend the man-hours that goes into something like this it's just absolutely amazing the weight in that is phenomenal no surprises for finding that the motors at the top here for the drums they go down into here which we also got that synchronized mechanism so they're all driven from the same place probably senses because they're all aligned they're all synchronized and everything else as the paper travels through the paper path in there so that looks like is that that's our locking bar I think on the front but even that like it's just amazing the amount of engineering is just going into that right alright check this out watch what happens when I lift up this this is the drum lock in you spot what's happening there these little alignment pins look all locking pins so to speak two of them on each of those drums isn't that awesome huge attention to detail stuff like that absolutely amazing and of course how all these feeders come out I mean it's just absolutely incredible through this each I'm just imagine how many molds would like a they can please anyone any mechanical engineering I can guesstimate how many molds would go into something like this plastic molds just absolutely amazing anyway there's our Rolla and does nothing else but roll by pulling this out this then interlocks to that then allows you to pull out this tray which is maybe probably should have done that at the start screw the pooch really come a gutter there so that's our paper path up tray there get sucked along that let's just continuous strip and lots of excess toner on that like there's lots it like there's just excess toner everywhere in this thing as no avoiding it eyes and have a pretty splash of color look at that and then you get like little senses in there doing something or other I don't know you just hear me say it again and again the complexity all this look at this mold this mold aficionados there you see haengju Zi Jing ABS now I might have this a bit ass about but you can see down here this is the this is the bottom tray that's where our drums go in you can see the contacts over here for our drums these cogs look like they're part of the drum drive there now if you're wondering how the toner gets on to the drum here's our toner cartridge okay this is the part where the toner comes out you can see that there's a thing that rotates in there so there's a motor at the back which I'm not sure like how it and in what quantity it dispenses that how it dispenses obviously it like it lasts a long time so we're talking about a tiny amount anyway this is the carrier that is bolted into the machine you can see that you slide in the toner cartridge this matches up with this port down here like this okay so you slide it in it matches up it's got little sensor there to detect how much toner how much my corona you got left and then it goes down here into this little pipe down here and then there's another little Drive down here which then shoots it out here somehow but anyway this matches up with here's our drum hmm that meets up with that so it squirts it into there somehow but right across but of course the idea with a drum is that it is electrostatically charged with the my corona wires and like high voltage and then the toner powder actually gets a little it row statically clings that and when the drum rotates in the paper passes over it that transfers the image onto the paper and then of course the paper goes over the fuser which then heats up and bakes the toner powder onto the paper and there's a channel all the way along the bottom there so that's how it disperses it and he's sayin he's never seen inside a laser printer before we want your reaction say again okay closed up the big ramp yeah that's where that's the paper path Huxley because how do you make up different colors what primary colors do you need Wow that's for an RGB this one correct actually these printers are slightly different they have yellow cyan magenta and black and you can make it up with RGB but this is how printers work you get more deeper colors and yellow cyan black yep cool huh how many parts do you think are in here say again a thousand or more parts so yeah this is what has to go into the design and manufacture of a simple laser printer one print one printer that's it travels up that's where it always gets jammed is that funny actually paper jams what's in a paper jam you say actually pulling off a cliff getting sucked into a black hole [Music] what we've got here is looks like with some sort of sensor happening not sure what they are looks like they just pop out that's nice and then you just snakey snake brilliant scratch that unfortunately that's just a contact that just makes contact that's the toner sensor contacts there's nothing doing there at all toss if you have a look down in here look this looks for all the world sy is going in there and these look like some sort of lead that emits into drum so what's that try to sense I don't know uh-huh so where that's actually going is through there's a little light pipe and that goes into all this which goes right along the drum is it a letter is it actually a photodiode it could be a photo diet just to detect that there actually are lighting up I guess okay so what you've got here is this plastic holder which goes the whole length of that drum and then you've got this light pipe physically feel those little marks in there little marks go all the way along why I mean that's not how the drum is imaged so I I don't know what the deal is there that's weird if you want to know how the drum is imaged well actually look inside there that look at all it looks like a Ken down painting it's absolutely remarkable anyway if like the imaging actually comes through these bottom slots down here there's glass plates in there and that's the actual imaging engine so there's actually wants to take those metal plates off there's a big plastic tray over the top of it all of this so all your laser II goodness is going to be in there and you'll notice that some of this is actually welded see I got some world marks there there there and down over here so yeah it's not just all screwed together and if we take this side panel off here we should find our high-voltage stuff tada do that five voltage slot cutouts in the board Oh in here so that's all for the oh that's all for the my corona wires and generates the high voltage which then illiteracy that used to electrostatically cling it's not high current it's just you know high voltage to then electrostatically cling all of the toner to the drum and there it is that just folds yeah it's really interesting in that they use these Springs up here like this to actually connect through to the board so you can see the just link contacts down here on the PCB very simple so they've got multiple channels there and as I said you can see all the high voltage our isolation slots very nice single sided construction of course to save cost and it looks like heart we've got a is that a triple a-- there and then we got more channels down the bottom here more spring contacts very cool well check it out looks like this whole assembly is just going to slide out haha Bobby Dazzler we've got some just clips on the end here and I think here we go yep tada there you go ah there's our laser mechanism isn't that fantastic check this out we got four laser diode modules down there they could have just done it with one then you wouldn't get the high speed through port and then you'd have to like have something that switched between the physical position of the four drums anyway so they're going for four separate laser diodes here and they come out they met out here and you'll notice there are different physical Heights here and so are these mirrors here there are deaf or different physical Heights as well so the laser comes out there bounces off there and then they've got various other mirrors all in here all doing the fantastic goodness and then that's our scanning prism they're scanning mirror whatever you want to our call it that raster scans all the way across like this and then use this got various mirrors that bounce off to the various jumps like this one here this is actually mirrored on the underside there for example this one up here we've got another mirror there yeah I mean follow the path I won't do it for you but yeah you can work out that there's going to be four separate cars in there for the light to scan across four so one scans across one drum here - drums three drums and then four drums like this that's terrific Oh like that and they're just using the one rotating mirror down in there to do all scanning so they don't need for separate scanners they just do it at slightly different heights so they don't interfere with each other and then they just do their reflector II goodness on to the four separate drums there's a lot of sweet engineering that goes into that I mean no really usable parts unless you had some novel application for the whole thing you know the whole assembly like that I don't know you might you might be a you know you could turn it into laser art or something like that if you're like a laser artist or you know something that'll be gonna be kind of cool are they visible I don't know if they're actually visible but you can definitely source for lasers in there for those playing along at home there's a laser diode board I'm not sure if we can get a part number on those chippies might be able to in 4k resolution I'm sure and there's not really much else doing on the bottom side there so I think we're pretty much done with the salvaging this thing so that is our total haul from this thing well not the parts that we kind of keep oh I'll show you all the good stuff we got but that's basically the guts of it most of it of course you know you throw out the whole Shazi it's absolutely useless and all the plastic moldy bits and the trays and things like that and you know you might be able to have fun with the laser mechanism otherwise you salvage the lasers if you need an IR laser in the thing let's have a look at some individual stuff well as for the main processor board there's really nothing here you'd want to salvage maybe that looks like a little DC to DC converter there and there maybe you might want to suck those up perhaps Italy they through-hole jobbies no there there BGA oh wow that's amazing anyway you might still be able to I use those perhaps you never know get the hot air gun on those suck those out little DC to DC converter modules are always useful should always have a bin of those but you know if you got the room you might throw this in your bin of like just random boards or something like that who knows when you might need a little surface mount and cap these that even though these are ten years old like you know it can still get you over trouble oh it's another little DC to DC converter module copyright 1984 to 2009 Adobe it's got some of their secret scroll post scripts code in there no doubt what's an LED LED or is that Q hard key what's that it's unpopulated anyway yet like there's nothing else on there to salvage really so me but of course one of the good things to get out of these are motors in this case little ass stepper motors Mitsumi stepper motor for those playing along at home seven and a half degrees step so you know not really high precision but you know that would be a real top quality stepper motor so you put those in your stepper motor box no doubt and I said let's show you this one closer up look at this I mean it's just absolutely amazing check that out and inside here there like a helical spiral thing so absolutely fascinating that these individual cogs there looks like they go what around and then snap back down is that yep yep they go once a rat wall this one goes once around like that and it could drop back down or something so what that's actually doing I don't know but that's really impressive and then of course you got this brushless DC motor on there 24 volts 2 amp job' no other markings so yeah whether or not you want to salvage those up to you we've got quite a few I think there's like three or four of those oh and by the way with anything being aboard a motor or sensory or whatever anything you take out of these keep the cable looms with them because you know it might be impossible to get or really pain in the ass to get another one of these connectors if you sell is the motor and then you'll want to go use it sometime I you have to hack it in oh you'd have to solder the wires in or replace the connector or whatever because usually you wouldn't have that sort of thing in stock and here's one of those stepper motor boards another tip of course um gets this screwed into a metal plate if you want to go reuse this thing just keep the screws screwing back in there so that you've always got them to hand anyway brushless DC motor control I have no idea what that chippy is there it's unmarked it's got a heatsink pad on top which I don't think was connected to anything but anyway um yeah if you can figure out how to reuse that they woke us and you should of course have a fan jumping as well and this one no idea Ultra flow that looks really nice made in Vietnam I don't want Viet needs feels but that's a nice little profile low profile fan I mean that's probably going to be like really super silent too so that could definitely salvage that you know you could turn something like that into a little not fume extractor but a little soldering fume blower just to blow across your bench just to get the fumes out of your face and something like this LCD panel I wouldn't even bother keeping the really unless you got the else unless you collect I'll see these maybe should have been of them but yeah generally going to choose a more specific one for a project but you know it could be useful so if you want to say obviously I'll say oh man I wouldn't keep the whole thing I'd get the LCD out of that and just salvage that one nice thing you can get out of products like this is C connectors very nice but this one check this out that's a score that's an earth leakage circuit breaker LCB so up upside down all the electrons are going to fall out there it is what is that that's a 10 milli amp job' wow that's actually a quite low 10 milliamps fuji electric wow that's a keeper fantastic it's got the test reset button on there Beauty another digital board check this out Fuji Xerox hello Dell who's making your printers for you and if we've got big single inline package - they motor drivers or something or other anyway yeah but apart from that that'd be like an e squared prom is it's in a socket yep like there's nothing you wouldn't really keep that you might have used for as I said like a box of miscellaneous tear down boards and stuff useful because you might need a crystal out of it or something like that now the my corona our board unfortunately the bad thing about keeping these is that they're B and they waste you know a lot of space for not many parts but you know you can salvage like little heat sinks have we got they regulators or us switching trainers down in there so yep you might be able to salvage those transformers I electrolytic caps and stuff like that but yeah the physical side of that let the parts reward versus the storage space for something like that unfortunately is not great and it's just got assembly stuff on the bottom you wouldn't care about and say I thought those might have been Maas but they they they're high voltage cap so they I can't read those there but yeah look little little check them out tiny little three pin I'm single in line square package wow you just don't see those these days but of course the piece de resistance of tearing down products like these the power supplies you can just get a ton of stuff out of these of course you ditch the metal work you don't want to keep that just takes up space in your bin but you can get top quality like electrolytic cups yep Nippon chemi-con thank you very much now that one hello rubbish what are these yep more Nippon chemi-con down there you got big ass jokes nice little surface mount fuses down in there check those out look you've got some real top-quality relays they're awesome Wow check out that transformer that's just pornographic I'm not sure if me how to reuse that but it is beautiful thing a beauty look at it oh wow and over here are they some big-ass moths wow they're enormous yeah just more chokes and big X&Y class caps and things like that you can get from these optocouplers some beefy switching trainees there by the looks of it fantastic to Sheba's now that one hand low rubbish quite a relay if they got down in there I think it's a really Wow so yep just generally lots of parts to our salvage out of a top quality power supply like this designed for high MTB I've MTBF mean time between failures and yeah that's it so it's Panasonic Panasonic looks like they designed this Wow there you go Panasonic designed power supply beautiful so there you go that's what's inside a laser printer probably not as many goodies as a photocopy upper house but considering that more people throw out these things then yeah there's definitely some salvageable parts in here not a huge amount but you know power supplies motors and IEC filters and you know what other goodness they're definitely worth scrapping so anyway like that if you did please give it a big thumbs up and as always discussing down below and you can check me out on my library channel as well and that's over on eevblog TV I hope you enjoyed it catch you next time [Music]

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 102,265

Rating: 4.9005928 out of 5

Keywords: eevblog, video, laser printer, dell laser printer, fuji xerox, fuji xerox printer, dumpster diving, teardown, scrap metal, recylcing, printer recycling

Id: hy1fOSj8_uw

Length: 29min 34sec (1774 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020