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.

Symphonic VCR

I've never heard of the Symphonic brand. A quick web search discovers that they started out as an audio company in the 1960s, then got bought up by the Funai Corporation in 1977. And now I know.


Of course, the brand is more or less irrelevant for VCRs like this. They're cheap, low-end, commoditized machines designed to affordably squeeze the last bit of life out of a dying media format. This is what you buy when your nice VCR craps out and you're still in the process of upgrading your movie collection to DVD. (I assume that if you're a fan of the VHS format and your VCR craps out, you go try to find another good one)


Well, there's your problem.


Always nice to get an added bonus thing to take apart. I've shown the guts of a VHS tape in detail before, so I just took the one picture.


The carriage, or whatever this part is properly called. Decent assortment of goodies inside, but not really notable enough to warrant more than one picture.


If it wasn't for the cassette lodged inside, this might have been a disappointingly small parts pile.

Singer model 6235 sewing machine

It's been two weeks, with winter vacation and all, since I've written about garbage. I don't want to sprain any brain cells, so I'm going to do a fairly easy write-up this week. That means, you guessed it, it's time for another sewing machine that wouldn't come apart.



Today's specimen is a Singer, though I can't say for sure the vintage. If I had to guess, I'd say some time in the 80s. While I haven't taken this specific model apart before, I know I've scrapped some other Singers of the era because I have some of those silver sliders.



Pop off the slider tips, open the hood, and stare at all those parts that aren't going to come out. But that's OK, I've come to accept the crap shoot aspect of taking sewing machines apart. Might as well accept it, because I doubt it's changing any time in the near future.



Not many parts out of this one. Mostly just surface parts.

Micro Innovations keyboard

The blog doesn't really reflect it, but I've taken a decent amount of computer keyboards in the past. And while I usually like to have multiples of types of parts, keyboard keys are something of an exception. Like I've mentioned before, I've gotten rid of large quantities of keys that I had collected. If I had unlimited space to keep stuff in, I might keep them, but space is very much at a premium right now.


I got this keyboard at the same time as I bought that optical mouse, and it was of a similar cheapness. It broke (or I broke it; I don't remember now), and I set it aside, halfway intending to try to fix it. And there it sat for well over a year, until this Fall when they had an electronic waste collection drive on campus. And so I decided I might as well just get rid of it (again, space is very much at a premium), but not before I grabbed a couple of trophy parts.


I'm not entirely sure why I took this picture, other than to show the little height adjuster thing there.


The exception to not bothering with keyboard keys are the non-square ones, which are less common, and for some reason I think of them as more useful.

Pfaff 1222 sewing machine

I found this Pfaff on the same night as the Hobbymatic I wrote about a few entries ago. Haven't seen any before or since, though.



This was a fairly solidly constructed machine. Other than the unusual placement of the controls, this is a fairly standard (and sort of boring) sewing machine.



Close-up of the control buttons. The mechanism takes up most of the length of the main body.



I was surprised that the control mechanism came out completely and so cleanly. In addition to the buttons, I pulled several metal parts that sort of look like heads of battle axes. No idea what I'll use them for, but I liked the shapes.



Not many things to salvage beyond the buttons and metal things.

Singer sewing machine

I wish I had much to say about this week's entry, but I really don't. It's not that interesting of a machine, and I didn't get very many parts off of it.



I didn't see any model name or number on this one, but if I run across it later, I may amend the blog. It looks to me like a relatively recent model though, but I could be wrong.



Once the plastic housing was removed, it was a lot less bulky.



The difference between the last picture and this one is basically the total of what I could pull from this sewing machine. See that wheel looking thing in the middle of the inner mechanism? I wanted that, but it didn't come off.



Very small parts pile this time.

Micro Innovations optical mouse

This is one of those rare devices that I take apart that was mine to begin with, rather than something I trash-picked. I bought this right after I moved here, and since I was light on cash at the time, I didn't buy a better one. This lasted about two years or so until it became unreliable.





It just sort of looks cheap, doesn't it?



The inside of an optical mouse has a lot less moving parts than the traditional ball mouse, which makes it less interesting for my purposes.



As a percentage of total parts, this is a decent parts pile, but beyond that, it's not very impressive.