How to Salvage Usefull Parts from Printers and Scanners

Oh you hello in this video I show you how you can disassemble disposable interpreters and scanners as well as combinations of the two furthermore how you can salvage valuable electronic mechanical and optical components from these devices in the video following this one I will take a closer look at some of these parts analyze them and finally make some suggestions what they could be reused for for demonstration purposes I will now disassemble this multifunction device which includes an inkjet printer as well as a scanner unit it is an HP brand PSC 22 10 which was built in 2002 the procedure of disassembling will of course vary with each model and brand the essentials however will always be the same first the scanners cover and then the rear access door can just be pulled out and put away after that all accessible screws on the backside and or on the bottom should be removed for this you will most probably need a set of talks or even security Torx screw drivers of different sizes the cheapest way to go is to buy one with exchangeable heads like the one I use in this video with the screws removed you can now try to pull off some of the plastic covers this however rarely works without the use of some force with some printers like this one you can salvage a little loudspeaker from one of the plastic covers with some of the plastic covers removed and after unplugging some flatbacks cables and wires it should be possible to separate the entire scanner unit from the printer at once we will take apart the scanner unit later after we have finished disassembling the printer with a scanner section gone all remaining part of the plastic casing can normally be removed this usually again involves a fair amount of unscrewing as mentioned before all these screws are the stalks type to be exact they are torques size t10 self tippers and I would call them the most used screw type in printers in addition to the screws the plastic covers are often fastened by some plastic hooks just use a little force and you will get them off at the back side of the device located in the little blue box we find the printers power supply unit it has its own plastic enclosure as it is often the case with this sole part directly connected to the mains it is a switched-mode power supply as it is to be found in any modern printer I will reverse engineer it in part 2 of this series and show you some useful purposes it can be reused for next I have to remove lots of torque screws again this time to get loose the printers mainboard which basically controls the device it is a high quality build but holds mostly highly specialized components that can hardly be reused nonetheless we will take a look at it in part two the same is true for a smaller board which mainly carries the devices network controller in almost any printer you will find an arrangement like this at the end of one of the steel axles glued on this white cogwheel is a transparent disc which cuts through opening of a little black component which is soldered on a PCB on the right hand side of that disk this component is a so-called photo interrupter it is a sword of light barrier that is used to measure the angle of revolution of the cogwheel and thus the axle at the edge of the transparent disc a shadowy ring is to be seen when viewed under the microscope however it is revealed that this is not a ring at all but a series of tiny opaque lines which interrupt the light barrier when passed through the photo interrupter and thus giving education for the angle of revolution of the axle this principle is put to use in many different parts of the printer and I will experiment with it in part 2 of this series the small DC motor the board carrying the photo interrupter and the transparent disk can easily be removed while this smaller DC motor turns the axle which pulls in the paper and this is just responsible for the relative movement of the printer head in y direction the bigger DC motor here located in the upper left corner moves the printer heads in X direction these motors are usually held in place by two or three screws make sure to keep these screws I recommend to loosely attach them to the motor again directly after salvaging this way you will not have to look for fitting screws once you want to install the motor in a new application this bigger DC motor can for example be reused for the drive of an RC car or a smaller robot as I did in an earlier project but more about this in part 2 when as in this case the motors have no soldering tax but these little white jacks it is important to salvage the cable harness to because it already comes with a fitting connectors with the motor gone I will now demand the big shiny steel bar which serves as a rail for the printer heads to slide on first some lubricant is wiped off then two or three screws at the two ends of the bar must be removed then the flat Flags cables that connect the mainboard with the printer heads must be pulled off then it should be possible to free the bar from the printer and likewise the heads from the bar this tooth belt can usually be separated from the printer heads by simply pulling it out the steel bar is a high quality component that can be reused for numerous mechanical purposes like exits for gear trains do not throw it away in front of the steel bar a transparent band is spent this band is made of the same material as a transparent disk we saw before it two serves in a photo interrupter arrangement which in this case determines the position of the printer heads on the x-axis not the main reason to tear down a printer but still useful are the numerous springs of different sizes and shapes that can be salvaged from it to get down to the remaining steel axles it is helpful to free the printer from some pieces of metal first at the bottom side of this waist in tang we find yet another DC motor we can get it lose by removing just one screw the white cog wheels might prove useful to do not try to take apart the tank itself it is a mess at the backside of the motor is yet another photo interrupter arrangement the lines are much thicker here and can be seen with a bear eye this can be used to measure the motors frequency of revolution which I will do with the follow-up of this video the remaining axles which serve the purpose of pulling the paper in from the paper tray moving the paper under the printer heads and pushing the paper out of the printer again can be loosened by turning a plastic lever at each end of the axles us turned around the excellence can simply be pulled out of the device these axles often carry interesting looking complicated gear trains from which many cog wheels can be salvaged the printer unit is now stripped down to its bare skeleton but the scanner unit still remains to be disassembled with this model just one single screw has to be removed then more than ever force might be required to get the casing open here the panel holding LCD and buttons just pops off maybe the LCD could be reused for something I however have no use for this part in this unit the glass panel that covers the scanner can be freed from the case by breaking off one single plastic pin the panel you will find a piece of plastic that can be cut off with a sharp knife the residual glue can be wiped off with a piece of cloth and some Universal thinner this glass panel can be reused in the process of PCB etching as I will demonstrate in a later video in the scanner remains a linear drive that is powered by a stepper motor that must be unscrewed this tooth belt can again simply be pulled out this arrangement could be used for all kinds of purposes where a linear movement is necessary I however have other plans for the stepper motor as you will see in the follow-up video next you can remove the board which carries the scanner CCD chip the small board that you see here is an inverter which transforms a low-level DC voltage into a high voltage AC to power a cold cathode tube that serves as the scanners lighting with a CCD and that you've removed all electronic paths are gone what remains are a couple of optical components like these mirror glasses and last but not least a funky lens system that is optically coded and produces interesting reflections the device is now completely disassembled

Channel: The Post Apocalyptic Inventor

Views: 990,619

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Id: tK_PPoFnCsU

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2014