Singer Quantum sewing machine

This specimen is as good an example as any of the crapshoot nature of sewing machines. On the one hand, it's relatively new, so there might now be so many mechanical bits to salvage, but on the other hand, a lot of whatever parts that are inside are plastic and thus less of a pain on average to remove. So, going into this, I didn't have too many expectations one way or the other.


Like I said, it's a fairly new sewing machine, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was still available at retailers. It also appears to be a low-end model, to make an uninformed snap judgment, and was thus probably cheaper to replace than to fix.

One other thing of note is the design of the little slider things on the setting levers. As far as I can remember, I don't have anything else of a similar shape in my parts collection. And knowing how I think, they'll likely sit unused for a very long time for fear of messing up the only ones of those I have.


Yet another free spool of thread. And this time it's actually in a color I can possible use, you know, if I ever figure out how to sew.


I kept the whole thing. One day, I'll probably get tired of oddly shaped plastic boxes, but that day hasn't come yet.


Fairly clean interior for a new sewing machine.


Note the exposed ends of those wires. They were originally hooked into a connector. I always try to pull those kind of circuit board connectors that plug into the little pins, but they rarely come off cleanly. This sewing machine, however managed to yield several of them with little effort.


Not an impressive haul in number of parts, but some of what I got are somewhat unusual.

Smith-Corona manual typewriter

I'm surprised at how many typewriters I've found in the small swath of town that I patrol since I moved here. This is the third in a couple of years, and there was one other one I wasn't able to get. All the others were electrics, so I was even more surprised to see a manual.



This is very close to a typewriter I had (or had access to) as a kid. Had I thought I had a shot at cleaning it up, I would have tried, even just for the purpose of selling it off or giving it away. But this was so rusted up that it was likely beyond repair.



Since it was so rusted up, getting parts off was a pain, when they would come off at all. For instance, the first few rows of keys came off readily, but that bottom row just would not come off.



The bottom--less clean than it looks.



Taking this apart, or rather taking parts off of it, was essentially an hour or so of trying different screws, turning the typewriter around, and attacking it from a different angle. I finally quit around the point pictured.



I pulled more parts than this, but other than the buttons, I really didn't bother to save that many of them.

New Home Memory Craft 5000

If it wasn't for the fact that I probably had nothing better to do the night I picked this machine up, it really wouldn't have been worth it. I mean, look at it.


For the longest time, I thought this picture was leftover from a set that I didn't completely transfer to another folder. It was only today that I remembered that this was, in fact, the way I found it. I guess there were a lot of salvageable parts on it.



Fortunately, they left the label with the manufacturer and model number on it, which I assume translates to Memory Craft 5000. Otherwise, I'd have had to just label this one 'manufacturer unknown.' Incidentally, I've now taken apart 5000, 6000, 7000, and 8000 series Memory Craft sewing machines.



Not much in the way of parts. You can understand why I didn't bother to take pictures of any disassembly.

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.