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.

New Home Memory Craft 6000 (x3)

It's a testament to the sheer diversity of electronics and appliances that have been produced that I rarely take the same thing apart twice. And I don't just mean since I've started blogging about it, I mean since I started fifteen or so years ago. It happens, of course, as the previous entry about the Macintosh disk drives show and some of the vacuum cleaner entries mention, but it's really not that common. And finding multiples of the same thing at the same time is even rarer.

And yet here we are, with three of the same type of sewing machine all grabbed on the same night. Not one or two, but three. My completely uninformed guess is that a local tailor liquidated, and the local sew/vac place bought up their machines, then tossed the junkers.

The three machines are in various states of completeness, so I decided to focus my photography on the most intact machine.

The mechanicals in the top portion were surprisingly simple and uncluttered, considering how many settings the machine has.

The back panel was one of those pieces that got removed by force, only to realize afterward that there was, in fact, another screw there that would have made the process easier.

After the control panel was removed, the whole unit is pretty much stripped.

The control panel was pretty complex, as shown here by this pile of parts.

This sewing machine could make around 160 designs, though after letters and numbers, they start to get kind of arbitrary.

So this is the total number of parts I could pull out of just one machine.

...Or so I thought. After I had already tossed the first machine, I discovered on the second one that the bottom panel came off, and would yield a couple of additional parts.

And here's the total selection of parts from all three machines. Pretty impressive, I think.

overlock machine, unknown manufacturer

The sew/vac place up the road from me has been a lot more intermittent in throwing stuff out lately. And when they do, it's often stripped to the bone. Of course, I can't really object to it; they're using those pieces to repair other machines, while I just put them in boxes with plans to one day use them to make little sculptures. However, picking up a cannibalized appliance can be irritating when I know they got most of the good parts. Or then there's the situation with this one.

This is an overlocking machine, and that's about all I know. Any panels or parts that would have a manufacturer's logo or model number were gone when I found this. I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened to me before now. I suppose it really doesn't matter, since I'm not going to be seeking out another one to buy. Especially since there's not a lot of parts on it.

I'm beginning to get to where I can tell when a sewing machine is going to be hard to break down. This is one of those. A very simple design that wouldn't yield many parts to my screwdriver.

I had reasonably high hopes for this mechanism. Lots of potential goodies, but once again, I couldn't get many out beyond those round plastic things at the top.

Not a lot of parts here, and to add insult to injury, the pieces were really reflective so now they look washed out.

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.