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.

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.

New Home Memory Craft 8000 sewing machine

It's back to sewing machines again for this week. This machine is interesting both in how high-tech it is, as well as the fact that it still sort of worked. See, when I sat down to take it apart, I noticed that the outlet for the cord was the same size as one I already had, so I decided to plug it in just to see if anything would happen. Well, it actually turned on. I was kind of surprised. I don't think it 'worked' exactly, but the settings appeared to change when I pressed the buttons. I thought twice about taking it apart, but decided to since obviously whatever was wrong with it was either not repairable or would cost more to fix than the unit's worth.

I have previously taken the 6000 and 7000 series Memory Crafts apart; the 8000 is much sleeker, mainly due to the lack of separate buttons for all the settings. Instead, it has a touchscreen, which is pretty snazzy for a home sewing machine.

This little compartment slides right off. I decided to keep it because one can never have too many little containers.

Sewing machine with the body panels removed, exposing a lot of tightly packed components.

The back side of the control panel.

Strictly speaking, there wasn't a large number of parts I could pull from this, but some of them were pretty big. That's not much of a consolation, though.

Audiovox VCR

VCRs are one of those devices that you would think has a lot more removable parts than it does. And simple tear-downs often make for boring entries, but here we go anyway...

As I picked this up on the side of the road, the top fell off, and I didn't bother to pick it back up, so that's why there's exposed circuitry. The cassette flap thing came off in transit and fell into the inside of the VCR. I'm wondering if these aren't symptoms of why it got thrown out in the first place. I'll also note that this VCR seems to be somewhat unusual in that the circuit board is at the top rather than at the bottom.

Another unusual feature is the fuse access thing on the back. I've never seen one on a VCR before, and certainly not on a relatively new one. User serviceable parts are something I associate with older electronics.

The VCR with the circuit board and top of the cassette carriage removed.

And the chassis totally removed.

Not a bad trophy pile, but not a great one. Then again, I'm running out of room to put all this crap, so maybe small parts piles aren't such a bad thing.

Electrolux Marquis vacuum cleaner

Since I added the tag feature on the blog a couple of weeks ago, I noticed it had been a while since I had posted a vacuum cleaner. As it happens, I have a vacuum cleaner in the backlog, so I might as well write an entry about it now. Besides, it breaks up the recent glut of printers and sewing machines.

I think this is a Marquis, but I'm not 100% sure. There aren't very many good pictures on the Internet of Electroluxes from its era (late 1980s), but the couple I did find that claim to be Marquis look pretty much just like this one. This particular specimen has plenty of scuff marks and scratches, so I'm guessing it had a long and storied career of cleaning up messes before finally giving up the ghost. Also, this is apparently one of the last models that had a metal body, before the switched over to plastic.

The front of the vacuum, with the housing removed. The control system looks fairly similar in principle to the older Silverado Deluxe I took apart last year.

Here you can see the see-saw-like on/off switch mechanism.

Not much to show for my efforts, but I do like the roller/knob parts on Electroluxes. I think they remind me of the wheels off some toy I used to have.