Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 712c printer

I usually try to come up with some sort of introduction for the first paragraph, but I'm just not feeling it this week. At the moment, I can't really think of anything to say about broken printers that I haven't already said.

I'm not sure why, but there was just something boring about this printer. It wasn't huge and heavy, but it wasn't tiny and feather-light. There weren't a huge number of parts, nor were any of them especially interesting. Thus, I didn't take many pictures of the teardown process. But I think you can get the idea anyway.

I guess this is sort of interesting. I found the printer already with this damage, but I'm not really sure why someone would bother. There's not anything really valuable inside a printer, as opposed to, say a TV which has that copper coil around the CRT. Maybe some homeless guy thought there was a leprechaun inside. Maybe a kid with a screwdriver just wanted to vent some rage on something he could break without getting in trouble (assuming that this damage happened after the printer was in the junk pile). I don't know.

Access panel, but from the angle of the picture, I can't tell what was behind it anymore.

The exposed chassis of the printer. There weren't a lot parts that would come off, or were worth saving.

Weak. Even that junky Lexmark had more goodies in it than this.

Baby Lock EA-305 overlocking machine

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that this is a fairly old overlocking machine. Why is that? Is it the font of the logo? Is it the basic shape or the shapes of the individual elements? Maybe a little, but the main reason is that it weighs a freaking ton. There is hardly any plastic used in its construction; this is a very dense little metal beast. Plus it had to be transported using the very uncomfortable metal handle, so this was a real pain to get back home.

Often, machines that are aggravating to transport redeem themselves by being chock full of interesting little goodies. This is not one of those instances. Actually let me rephrase that: there might have been plenty of cool little parts inside this, but I wouldn't know, because I couldn't get into it, despite my shiny new screwdriver set.

Knobs. That's all I got out of this. At least they were multi-part knobs.

Sharp UX-108 fax machine

The era of single-purpose fax machines affordable enough for home office use was a short one. Not long after fax machines like this came on the market, the manufacturers decided to switch to inkjet/laserjet printing systems and just make printer/fax/scan/copy combination machines. I'm sure you can still get fax-only machines, but they're certainly a rarity among small offices. What all this means, to bring it to a point, is that it's not very surprising to me that this is the only fax machine I've ever found.


Visually, it basically looks like what it does. The style is very much of its time period, that transition between really boxy electronics and today's overly-styled electronics.


The handset receiver, which looks blue in this shot for some reason. Basically hollow inside, except for the tiny little mic and speaker.


This machine came with a partial roll of thermal fax paper still installed. It doesn't have any perforations, and the slick surface isn't good for writing or drawing on. Basically, it's not good for anything beyond being fax paper, so I threw it out. That pretty much sums up why the market was so quick to switch to plain-paper fax machines.


Despite basically being a printer, the inside of the fax really wasn't very complicated or photogenic.


Lots of buttons on sprues.



Not a bad harvest, on par with the average printer.

radio/cassette/CD player, unknown manufacturer

One of the downsides about only doing one entry per week is that some of the photo sets can stay in the backlog for over a month, maybe more if I find a lot of stuff over a short period of time. This entry, for instance, is from July's heavy trash day. I think. I didn't bother to write down exactly when I found it because it really doesn't matter. And of course, writing this entry further puts off other things that I found at the same time. I just hope I can keep remembering enough about each appliance to write something about them.

As you can see, this radio is far from mint condition. Parts are missing (the parts that most likely had the manufacturer and model names), there are various decorations drawn or stuck on it (the stickers suggest the former owner was a teenage girl), and it looks like it's been dropped or kicked. I am going to assume that the markings inside the cassette deck were made after the door came off, so it seems that the owner didn't just trash it at the first problem. I can relate: I still use my portable CD player/radio despite the CD player not working, and the radio not working as well as it used to. (When it finally kicks the bucket, be sure I'll scrap it and post pictures.)

The radio more or less splits in half. The housing seems to be designed around the size of the speakers, rather than the electronics, hence all the empty space in the middle.

The cassette player controls remind me a little of piano keys from this angle.

The CD player is its own module. I don't remember getting a lot of interesting parts out of it.

The focus of this picture is that tall column where the screw goes in. I like taking things with cavernous plastic housings apart because they often have columns like this. Rods and tubes are good basic shapes to have around, much more versatile than some of the more esoteric shapes that I often get.

Not a bad haul, though I seem to recall taking apart radios that had more stuff in them.