Printer Escapades

[rikitheshadow]

Ok, this is the second time my older sister has turned over a broken printer to me to take a look at. The first I might say was some small cheap HP printer. It was somewhat of a simple fix, the clip that held the printer head to the drive belt chipped and broke off. It was a simple remedy, though I must say I came up with a redicilous method to fix it...... I tied the printer head to the drive belt with some twine, and with what was left of the clip I glued it back in place with plastic cement. It worked well, but it was somewhat to no avail as my sister did not require it anymore. Oh well, free printer for me, which I must say came in handy for school use.

Now just recently she brought me some Epson Inkjet printer with a scanner combo, for some reason it would either jam or on start up it would report errors by flashing all the display lights. Took me a while to get it opened, broke a few clips that held the control panel down and so on so forth. I wanted to test run it, but the dang scanner bed was in the way of my view.....So I disconnected it......it refuses to turn on without it attached to the control board. So I had to set it off to the side dangling on the cords. Anyway seems that some small plastic clip that is somehow controlled by the paper feed motor would pop out and block the printer head....but somehow was a natural function. When it did block the printer head from movin too long, it would cause the error report. So I unscrewed the main assembly and removed it from its plastic shell, opened up the paper feed mechanism gear box that somehow controls that little arm and the paper tray. Well it seems that paper tray mechanism, in conjunction with the paper feed mechanism, seemed jammed. I tried unjamming it and rebooted it.....basically upon startup it returned the mech to the position I had moved it from, and continued jamming and reporting errors. From my first assumption I was like, some delicate piece that controls that mech has broken or something, and it can't work properly now. So I just told my sister your going to have to buy a new one.........That was the first day.....Tonight I decided since it was to be scrapped I'd tinker with it and maybe take it apart further. Well I did, but what I found is quite hilarious, evidently I didn't dig deep enough, but sure enough the paper feed mech was jammed, with a thumbtack...................Anyway, removed it, put it partially back together because I do not have magnetic screwdrivers, taped the control panel back down...........and sure enough it works. The arm does not block the printer head, the paper tray works properly, and it can feed paper. It may be delicate now that its missing a few screws, but it works!


Tell me about ya'lls silly repair escapades that somehow turned something so tedious to easy in seconds flat.

[bicostp]

My dad's work threw away a Color LaserJet 4500 series printer with wired and wireless LAN cards, and a complete set of fresh cartridges. It recently had a rebuild kit and new imaging drum installed, so it's basically new. Problem is, they had been using remanufactured toner cartridges for a while, and one blew its plug and dumped its contents all over the inside. They tried running it like this for a while, but all the hot parts inside got coated with magenta toner. I just took all the removable parts out, blew the whole thing out with the air compressor (being careful to hold my breath so I wouldn't contract Purple Lung), cleaned the rollers with alcohol, and when I put it back together it worked! It worked for about a month of light use before the fuser died. Oh well, gotta order another one.

[limpport]

I work in the IT department at my college. We have a robotic DVD printer there (it burns DVD's and CD's and prints on the label on top), but for some reason, it wasn't working. We sent it back to the company to fix it. We got an email from the company saying that some sort of liquid shorted out a board on the inside of the printer. They looked into it, and determined it was mouse pee.

Someone updated the work order name to "Robotic DVD Printer Problems (teehee mouse pee)"

Then we found a dead mouse in the heater a few weeks later. We followed the smell :barf:

[rikitheshadow]

Surprised they tested the liquid to see what it was......rofl

They should know those systems like the Fuji Rimage (Robotic CD Burning/Labeler System), like at my work, use thermal printers for label making. No liquids involved.......unless it uses inkjets to label it, no protective coat from those though.


Edit: By the way, anyone with stories feel free to share, they don't have to be about printers alone.

[limpport]

The DVD's had paper labels you had to put on first, because it was an inkjet printer.

[vskid]

I bought an old Tyco Fast Traxx RC tank several months ago. I got it home and it didn't work. I took it apart and nothing seemed wrong. The only sign of life it gave me was the motors turned for just a second when I first tested it. I was giving it another go tonight and noticed the transmitter's LED looked kinda dim. Tested the 9v battery with my multimeter and got about 3v, and the I could barely feel anything with the tongue test. Put a better battery in and now it works. It must have been in the controller when I got it, and I figured that if it had enough power to turn on the LED, it must be good.
Lesson learned: Always check the batteries first.