Dissection

I've just finished cleaning the sticky refuse from my hands, as best I could. I must say, I really enjoyed myself.

No it wasn't some poor little creature, I was busy dissecting an old HP Deskjet 990Cse. Dissection may be to clean of a word to be honest. It was in many pieces, and had no hope of being re-assembled when I was done.

My (near) pathological hatred of ink-jet printers has not gotten the better of me. I salvaged this printer from the trash just for parts. I missed out on Sparkfun's free day by seconds, so salvaging dead machines is my only source of free parts right now. It certainly wasn't as exciting as getting $100 of free stuff from SF, but there was a certain therapeutic value to ripping this unit apart.

What I found very interesting is it wasn't all that complicated inside. The bulk of it was just machinery for moving paper. Two motors were really about all that could be recovered. There were a few more bits and bobs, but they were covered in sticky five year old ink. The add-on duplexer ended up being nothing more than a set of rollers, with the only electronic component being a little photo-switch. The sad part? Not only is duplexing inkjet output a horrible idea, that duplexer cost well over $100 new, and some poor souls still buy them for $50 refurbished.

Useful or not, that certainly was a cheap way to entertain myself for over an hour.