Hewlett-Packard psc 2210xi printer/scanner/copier

Epson Stylus Color 740i printer

Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 5440 printer

I'm not sure why, but I put off writing about this printer for a long time. I think I just thought it was boring. Boring to write about, anyway; I got a decent number of parts out of it, and I wasn't nodding off while taking it apart. I just haven't felt like writing about it for whatever reason. But I don't want to get lazy and just have a picture entry (a permanent one anyway), so here goes:


The design here is very uncluttered, but it falls more toward 'uninteresting' rather than 'sleek.'


A view of the printer head and the ink trays. I mainly took this picture, however, for the clearer shot of the model number.


Removing the top of the housing, you have the same parts-on-a-platter configuration common in most modern printers. The one unusual thing about the housing design is that the sides were separate pieces, the same as that little Lexmark I took apart some time ago.


Maybe I was too hasty in declaring this write-up boring. This is a pretty good cluster of gears: several of the same size, easy to remove, and if I'm not mistaken, not made out of that nylon-esque plastic that doesn't work with most paints or adhesives.



A pretty decent parts assortment. Also, you can see the side pieces of the housing I was talking about.

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.

Compaq IJ700 printer

I generally don't like things that are asymmetrical just for the sake of being so. And in the context of this blog, appliances that are designed with asymmetry as part of the aesthetic. Obviously, there are some things that have to be asymmetrical, like a sewing machine, and you can only put the control panel one one side of something, but I'm talking about non-functional stuff. Part of it is just personal preference, and part of it is because symmetric pieces are easier for me to find uses for.

This Compaq (incidentally, I had forgotten they even made printers) is very subtle about not being symmetrical, until you examine individual parts. The tray at the top has a guide on just one side, the green button is a really wonky shape, and there are several other examples not evident in this picture.

This is another issue I had with this printer: all the extraneous plastic that was on top of the 'core' case.

Look at that little thing, compared to how big it was with the plastic still on.

I got a decent amount of parts. Not many gears, though; most of them didn't want to come out.

Lexmark Z1300 printer

This is the first time I've taken anything apart that uses, for lack of a better term, an iPod-esque design. By that, of course, I mean clean minimalism and rounded right angles, as opposed to the quasi-organic looking and sometimes busy lines used on a lot of electronics over the past fifteen or so years. I have to imagine though that this won't be the last, since a lot of manufacturers seem to be adopting that kind of design language.

The first thing I noticed when I snagged this was how light it was. And by light, I mean cheap. Most desktop printers of this size have some heft to them, but this one almost felt like an empty case. I know that plastic construction does not automatically equal low quality, but this is a fairly new printer and already in the trash. So yeah...

The top of the body shell came off pretty easily. There doesn't look like much in the way of parts, but there were actually a decent amount.

See that brown thing in the middle of the picture? That's a roach. A live one, in fact, and I got this far in taking the printer apart before I saw it. Taking this picture was immediately followed by taking the printer outside and shaking the roach out (squashing it would just have made a mess).

The printer, sans body case.

Decent parts haul, and fortunately not a roach turd to be found.

Hewlett Packard OfficeJet printer/fax machine

No entry last week dues to computer issues. Different issues this time, though.

I saved the best of the three printers from last heavy trash day for last. In fact, this one's not just a printer, it's got a fax function too. My dad has one of these (or one very close to it, anyway), and it always seemed like it'd be fun to take apart. Turns out, it actually was, except for the screws, which I'll get to later.

This wasn't the biggest of the three printers, but it was still a pain to bring back to the apartment.

The fax control panel came off as a single piece (other than the wires holding it to the rest of the printer), though it took a while to get it that way, if I remember correctly, because of the screws used on this printer. The plastic housing parts were held on with Torx head screws, and the only Torx screwdriver I have was about one size too small. I'm lucky that I didn't strip any of them out.

Further into the disassembly. From here on out, it's pretty much like taking any printer apart, so the fax part was sort of like a bonus.

It was a fun breakdown, but it wasn't a complete one. This picture shows more or less where I had to give up since parts just wouldn't come off anymore. Not for lack of trying though; I really wanted those big rubber rollers.

I'd say that's a pretty decent trophy pile.

Epson Action Laser 1500

OK, before I talk about anything else, I have to make a snide remark about the name 'Action Laser.' Seriously Epson? I can understand having 'laser' in the name, since it's a laser printer, but what about printing says 'action?' Action Laser sounds like the name on a particularly cheap dollar store toy whose Chinese manufacturer didn't spring for the good translators.

This is the second printer of the three I got a couple of weeks ago. It's also the largest of all of them (and probably approaching the size limit of anything I can get home without anything other than a bike), as well as the most enjoyable. The parts that looked like they should come off did for the most part, and without much fuss, and there were indeed a lot of parts.


Here it is in all its beige and bulky glory.


And here's the toner cartridge, which I removed and took apart before the printer itself.

I got a few parts out of it, but I didn't want to tear in to it with any gusto, for fear of spilling toner all over the place. A little bit leaked, but I was able to make short work of it with the vacuum cleaner and a wet paper towel.

Back to the printer itself, I started by removing the top access panel. There's even some parts to take off on that.


Taking that one panel off revealed a lot of parts, but I had to take the rest of the panels off to actually get at them.


I decided to keep this control panel mostly intact for the time being, much like the keyboard in the previously discussed typewriter, since it's easier to keep up with the whole unit rather than all the little parts.


The chassis of the printer, almost picked clean at this point.


I got a lot of parts out of this printer, so it was definitely worth the aggravation of having to carry it back on a bicycle.

Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 6p

The run-up to heavy trash day this month had a shockingly large crop of printers. Not just chump home printers, but large business machines. One is even a printer/fax. Of course the downside of large printers is getting them back to the apartment. They wouldn't fit in my big duffel bag, and I don't have a trailer or cargo rack for the bike, so I was reduced to balancing a printer on my seat as I walked the bike back. I have to wonder what passing drivers thought I was doing. Unfortunately, due to size and distance restrictions meant I could only nab three of the five printers I saw.

Teardowns of big printers like this are always entertaining, though this one was more toward the 'meh' end of the 'good' range, if that makes any sense. I got a decent amount of parts out of this, but it wasn't a very photogenic disassembly, so I didn't take many 'during' pictures of the process.

A view from under the hood, unfortuneately somewhat obscured by the glare of the metal strip in there. One of these days, I'm finally going to justify building some sort of diffuser for my overhead light.

The naked printer, without all the plastic panels. And I seem to recall some of the plastic not wanting to come off.

This is the standard wall of gears in pretty much every printer I've taken apart. The twist here is that it's covered up with a metal panel, which I could not for the life of me get all the way off. So while I managed to retrieve the bulk of the gears, there were a few that got away.

The chassis of the printer, just about stripped of salvageable parts.

There were quite a few parts that came out of this, as I mentioned earlier, so I split the pile into two photo groups. It's always nice when I'm forced to do that.