Holy crap, he does exactly what I do with old electronics!

The resistor is a fuse resistor + diode, printers usually have a counter inside that counts how many pages have been printed or how many times the roller/fuser has turned and when it reaches the limit set by the manufacturer e.g. 10,000 pages the printer over currents the fuse resistor burning it out and now printer will refuse to print. it will usually give you a message in your PC saying maintenance needed bla bla bla replace XX assembly/part. Toner cartridge also have a chip inside them that is just a coutner- it does not actually track the toner levels so when you hit the limit the chip tells the printer im done... when it is not and it will refuse to print (even if you only printed 1 dot for the 1000 pages and your cartridge is full) .. it also stops you from refilling but you can buy the little chips and fuse resistor on ebay Manufactures really really underestimate the life of the parts so you have to replace them more often. Some people desolder or short out the EEPROM chips on the logic board so that it cant keep track of how many pages have been printed lol The fuse assembly, logic and power boards are actually valuable for if they work, stick on ebay especially the heater/fuser assembly.

From what you salvaged on rail assemblies and such, I start to wonder if you would have enough to build a rudimentary 3D printer if you'd combine it with a raspberry or perhaps an arduino.

A good Afternoon about every year. I love tear down days.

I need to do dumpster diving again, used to salvage everything! I got a garage full to back that up!

This guy is Bear Grylls of electronics

For an engineering project my group and I took apart an old inkjet printer. It did not have a full one piece head movement component like the fax but we took out the axle, print head holder and motor. With an Ardunio we built a functional 3 story model elevator. It was pretty cool.

If you can find the datasheet, its worth keeping the drivers with the motors. They will be handy to interface with microntrollers and especially for driving the stepper motors they came with (usually, just need clock and sometimes enable pin). I guess you should keep them and the wiring as a complete "package".

Thanks!!! I learned a lot. Coming from a really new guy to this stuff, I always appreciate your explanation of things because you put complex things in plain english. Keep it coming man.

A very familiar experience. Enjoyed the tear downs!

Awesome haul there. Looks like you've got yourself enough parts to make a laser printer or fax machine or something like that.

Wow you move fast when you take things apart! :) Love your Blog Dave!

I believe the weird little steel plate/resistor/diode combo from the laser printer makes contact with the end of the toner drum/roller's axle. At least that's what I remember from a teardown of my own. My guess is it's used to control the charge of the drum, so static doesn't build up and smears toner dust all over your pages or something. Maybe. Honestly, I have no idea, other than that it makes mechanical contact with the toner's metal axle.

Damned intern! I was wondering where the hell my fax machine disappeared to!

1)save and open the tiny button switches- they have a silver contact. 2)save the oscillators- they are silver, 3) save the ink jet cartridge - the film has gold on it, 4) save the white plug-ins on the circuit boards, the contacts inside are gold plated, 5) take the computer cable, cut the ends off, and remove the gold- plated contacts. 6)save the wires in the ink jet printer and computer cable. i use this small wire for my other radio projects (i just finished changing my old clock radio into a SW/ AM/ FM radio, and used some of the scrap wire from my ink jet printer.)

This is a series that needs to make a come back! Cheers.

You can salvage the RAM and the flash from the controller boards, just saying. :)

I always take those little connectors - both the pcb side as well as the wire-side. Excellent for connecting your custom projects.

Do you ever make things with the stuff you salvage?

You're so laid back Dave, Wish I could work at your shop with you!

I've used the motors from printers a few times, the ones with gears are great! You can hook them up to a simple rectifier and use them to make kinetic powered circuits. I use them with sound synthesizers, I recommend trying it out :)

I tend to collect the inter-board cables and the matching plugs from the board, as well.

I remember 40 years ago I used to get a right buzz finding electronic equipment and stripping motors, amplifiers, speakers, transformers etc etc. Brings back good memories. And I still enjoy stripping old equipment till this day ☺

20:04 I've built a reflector using that heating element... it's a 425W halogen tube(at least in those that I took apart). 2 or 3 of those also can be used as an electic heater if you put it in a black metal case. Be warned! Acrillic paint will burn of easily if you don't respect a proper distance(wich makes it less efective), or don't protect if from overheating. That thing can heat up metal over 100 degree C wile most paint supports only about 60 - 80 degree C max. 23:35 That lens is in angle to deflect the laser beam exactly to that rotating mirror.

I get the videos just in time to watch with my morning coffee :) Thanks.

@EEVblog just a tip keep the USB connecters on the board and also any connecters that are on the outside of the casing /boards ☺

Gonna be looking at VHDL programming and microcontroller implementation subjects at my university. Want to specialize into microcontroller and advanced circuitry design so yeah for me those microcontrollers seem like a great project

27:16 "speedy exit from the dumpster" i know this feeling well. eNinja with his trusty multitool, mini torques set of security, and crowbar of justice; nothing can stop him from his stealthy getaway from the dumpster of usefulness!

I got to where I'm keeping random screws and nails and bolts, but I wonder if I 'll have need for springs, capacitors, etc in the kind of things I do for hobby building. Trying to think how much I should spend to take time on tearing down more of these things or just handing them off to someoe else who might benefit from it. Thanks for the tear-down!

If you are starting out on the cheap, a lot of those connectors and buttons are useful to stockpile, like USB ports and power connections... the 'flat flex' or ribbon cable connectors might be useful if you have plans...

I took apart the exact same fax a few months ago. The LCD panel is pretty easy to reclaim as it is HD44780 compatible. The steppers and the smps were a good trophy as well...

how would you probe the laser module? I opened an older laserscan thing too ... Also is it that save to reuse the power supply board? nice video!

Sir with the right size copper connector you can fashion a torch tip with a Gear inside of the copper and it Make a Nice Flame

I'm sure others must have aalready said. But printers in particular are very useful in the building of "roll your own" 3D printer projects. They have many many useful parts/assembly's.

Hey Dave! I know it has been a long while you have uploaded this video but if you still have those encoders and what you call photo interrupters, you can actually build your self a handy dandy 3D printer. I am trying to do that right now but it is a bit challenging :) Also, they are called optical linear encoders sometimes!

12:35 We now have your fingerprint to put on file... Appreciate that mate!

You might want a list of the fully working stuff I've found this year.. I cant do one, there are too many! Off the top of my head: Stereos, Big magnifying ring lights in need of a bulb, loads of aquariophilia stuff, small tanks, bubblers, pumps, (woohoo pcb etching tanks), Numerous scanners, including an extra flat travel one. That's excluding the stuff needing minor repair, often purposefully disabled by the previous user, usually severed power cords.. And that's limiting to electronics!

The metal rods are great for home made cnc machines and 3d printers, anything you need to make an x, y grid and have the motors move, though the plastic pulleys aren't that robust and wouldn't hold up to much abuse.

I have a stock of many thousands of parts, from gears to diodes, and caps, to FET's, toroids, and IC's that I got by pulling parts from junked electronics and consumer products. I once spent 4 hours one day pulling parts and estimated I had recovered nearly a thousand dollars US worth of parts. Electronics, if I'm not building it, or fixing it, I'm scrapping it, and sorting it.

I once used a fuser roller assy from a laser copier to make a pcb toner transfer roller :-) definitely a keeper

I use the stepper motors and flat glass from old multifunction printers ($3-5 at the thrift store) for my robotics / 3D printer projects.

I have a bunch of these and after my first year down I figured best to keep them together cause they take less space and are safer that way till I have use

Those linear way rods on the carriages are worth keeping if you're into motion control/cnc stuff.

Could you do a video on how to get that color lcd working? I have one of those printers laying around and I would like to know if that lcd can be driven from a micro.

Save every screw you remove and keep all the different sizes in an old jar. There may be a missing one on something you get in the future which you can quickly replace by picking through the ones you have collected.

I use the precision ground rod, that the ink cartridge carrier travels on, to set the tail stock on my small lathe. Set is between centers and you have a good point for your indicator to reference. Sorry, I know it is not electronics but many of us have more than one hobby. BTW a purpose made rod for setting your tail stock can run well over $100. Just a thought.

Those hardened steel linear rods make for great gear shafts, drive shafts, etc...

use the motor modules for a 2d laser printer or 3d printer?

make a 3D printer with the rollers and motor

Great video!. I salvaged the same hp printer, couldn't find a way to use the lcd module, can you give me a hint on that please?

That device at 19:00 is probably the paper tray sensor. I did not see where you got it from but on some printers there are guides in the paper tray to identify what kind of paper is in the machine such as 8.5 x 11, legal or A4. When you adjust the paper tray, it presses on different areas of the sensor. So that might be what it is.

I used to go dumpster diving a long time ago... i should start doing it again

You missed out on a really interesting piece on that linear actuator for the inkjet. It looked like it had one of those optical feedbacks for positioning, a plastic strip with lots of small stripes on it and a reader head in the cartridge holder. Depending on the construction of the optical reader it can be dead simple all the way to completely impossible to read using a micro controller though.

You can use the springs to tension the steel wire of a hot wire cutter for polystyrene cutting. As the wire gets hot it expands in length. So we need a spring to tension it and to conduct electricity to the wire.

Those motors with the gears and the printer head slider could be useful to build a camera dolly for time lapses and panoramic shots

Excellent vid!

I did this all the time when I was a kid. Time to restart my junk pile!

actually, the laser scans across a special coating on an alluminum tube that gets charged elecrically when hit by the laser, wich then attracts the toner powder and when the tube turns, it deposits the toner on the page and then the page gets heated and the toner sticks to it. hope that clears it out for ya!

Apparently, UrJTAG can be used with the USB Blaster and many different devices. The pinouts on most things probably won't match the standard Blaster cable though, so you'd need to solder the individual signals to the correct pins on your device. You'd also need to know the memory map of the device, and what type of Flash chips or IO it has etc. (assuming UrJTAG supports it?).

As a foot note to the laser diode, there are some nasty elements to playing around with them depending on the wavelength. Most of these diodes are 808nm IR and when you power them up you see a piss poor red illumination, they is in fact pumping heaps of energy out in the non visible spectrum. BE CAREFUL, they WILL snot your eye. On the plus side you can take the KTP/YVO4 crystal and all of the optics from your green laser pointer ( assuming it is 808nm ) and use the source as to pump the crystal and emit 532nm. I'm not going into the physics of 3 and 4 state population inversion systems, however, through a series of frequency doubling ( second harmonic generation ), a high power green laser can be achieved. Make sure you keep the same orientation to the LD as the original pointer and you are off and running. If you don't keep the correct orientation nothing will come out. Admittance angel is important but if you play around enough green photons will come streaming out.. Lastly, I suggest TEC cooling the crystal of your duty cycle will be in the order of a few seconds and the life of the crystal will be reduced significantly as this method is at best 30 percent efficient; therefore, 1 watt 808nm in, 200-300mw out at a crystal temp of 23C. Have Fun!

I think that little section with the resistor and diode is maybe connected to ground, and is used to make sure there is no static on the rollers or maybe something like that, although that would make more sense for a toner printer.

14:36 Well i kinda want to make some measuring tools form one of those (or slider showed earlier, actually with slider this would be easier because i wouldn't had to make transition from linear move to rotational move.)

Thinking of your junk bin makes me think of the difference between OUR "useful" and everybody else's "useful".

18:55 i guess thats in series with the cartridge's metal bars for the sensors

The opto interrupt in Samsungs tend to be the reason they get tossed. The LED fades and the sensor stops working, making it jam all the time.

Those lasers and driver chips are very interesting when you want to experiment with laser-links or other high-speed applications. Infrared (laser)diodes are cheap and the driver chips from laserprinters can drive pretty powerfull communication devices as well as lasergun-speedometer jamming (diodes)/lasers.

Have you had any luck in lighting the lamp in the all in one? Also is the heater in the laser printer a halogen bulb or an actual element? I pulled apart a scanner about a year ago and found a CCFL lamp in the scanner head and made an emergency light out of it. The inverter runs on 12 volts.

Hi Dave, What was that black box near the printer?

I've taken apart some laser printers and found halogen lamps used as heaters. They are double-ended tubular lamps 27.5cm in length with R7S base.

Heya Dave, I noticed your wearing your 555 timer shirt :D! Got mine a come a couple weeks ago! Keep getting asked what it is lol. Keep up the good work. Greetings from the Scenic Rim! (South east QLD) Cheers, Damien

On the processor boards the flash and SDRAM might be useful to someone. Sometimes you find stuff like CPLDs that you can reuse. Stuff like USB connectors come in handy too.

The fuser unit from one of these laser printers is quite useful if you are making your on PCB`s with the toner transfer method, ... just take the PCB and the transfer paper and run it throu ... you`ll still need the powerunit for it thou, and perhaps the motor, but heck, you are getting yourself a easy to make "toner transfer unit" :)

I actually pick these up, tear down for useful components and recycle the rest. The plastics go to the recycle bin. The metal goes to the scrap yard. The boards go to recyclers on eBay after I get what I want and gold bits go to gold recyclers. I get good stuff for projects and make money at the same time. Not much, but something to pay for gas. Lol.

The print head mechanism is great for inverted pendulums

On the first machines power supply, what current would you think it would be able to supply? Just curious because of the size :)

Good to practice soldering/desoldering on. Just the cost of solder and the wick.

Awesome! how powerful is that laser diode? powerful enough to be used as laser scanner for imagery?

The sensorboard @ 15:57 is not cold cathode but a 3 color led bar with a foto resistor bar next to it. I thought cold cathode was only used with the ccd-scanners.

i would use the high res wheel thing for a hard drive clock to better time it to make a more stable image.

Where in the world do you find equipment in that good shape idve sold as entire unit unless youd make more as individual parts. Thx for sharing

Awesome video!

Instructables.com has many pages of re-use ideas for the parts that Dave explained.

A cool use would be to use the laser module to print traces directly on to a photosensitive coated board, but i am guessing one would need to replace the laser diode with a UV one.

probably that mystery plastic component with the resistor and diode is probably the WI-FI antenna some of these units that have WI-FI use cheap antennas such as the one in question.

Is that weird part with the diode and resistor a static discharge contact point? It is in a laser printer after all.

You can use the fuser as a great toner to pcb transfer for homemade prototype pcb.

Hey that laserjet 1010! Why do you destroy it? I took it from my uncles office and its works flawlessly!

In the laser printer you have the laser diode which is in the laser diode scanner module. The laser diode is not going to be much use to anyone wanting to build say a laser pointer or anything. They are fairly low power 35 milliwatts or less I believe but I do know that they are infrared. So they are an invisible beam of laser light so not good for a laser pointer. Also very dangerous because even at that low to medium power they could blind you and you wouldn't even know that the invisible light beam hit your eyes so I was suggested people do not experiment with them unless you know what you're doing. And always wear protective layer laser goggles when experimenting with a laser diode, and make sure you have the goggles of the right wavelength protection.

The resistor and diode on plastic holder is used for HV discharge from opto cylinder. Otherwise it will not grab toner (charge up by laser) and not put it on paper.

Fair enough, cheers for replying none the less man.

Good fun and useful parts!

@ EEVblog I dont know wich is worse, that it does that to me too, or that it does that to me, in a whole different timezone, where it's supposed to be early morning?! Total Non sequitur, but Dave, the printer rods usually machine really nice and easy, or so I've been told, so if you are into machining of teeny tiny parts and own amill or/and a lathe, they are free candy! I stock those for when the time comes that I have access to this tooling

I think the resistor has something to do with dis-assembly safety. High voltage is used in those copiers and since it's reached using Villard cascade voltage multiplier, which utilizes diodes and capacitors, it's best to have a way to discharge it automatically. Those are my guesses only tho! Would love feedback on this theory.

Once I disassembled an HP printer and got two useful things: Bluetooth USB Stick, WiFi USB Stick. I use them in my pc, They are bare board, no enclosure, but very good. I put the Bluetooth and win7 identified its driver fast, but the Wifi was not easy to find the drivers.

Building and converting into plug in modules could work. I have seen plug in heavy duty module for VCR to tape 24/7.

We are so jealous of your dumpster room.

My guess is that the markings are for alignment during assembly (or even just alignment aids used when printing the plastic strip) and not read by the sensor.

It's usually infrared, power in few milliwatts. I.e. much lower than you can find in DVD-RW drives. Scanning mechanics is very useful though :-)

The scanners tend to have the best stuff in terms of rods and stepper motors

Reminds me of my boyhood sessions in the garage taking stuff apart except none of this stuff existed when I was a boy, ha, ha.