Where does your printer inkt goes?

[laserwinkel]

i was a bit bored and had a epson printer/scanner that wasnt working anymore.
the printer was still in its warranty but epsons warranty is the worst warranty ever. they just send you back a printer from someone else with another problem.
when i sended it back 3 times i decided to give up on it and never buy a epson anymore.
so i decided to take it apart and see its inside as i was always wondering how a printer head would look like

so this was the printer:

after taking the scanner off and the protective plastic we have this:

taking off the bottom protective plastic:

looking better i see 2 motors (ideas: lumia and effect wheel for my laser? )

looking at the mainboard it seems to have a wifi card attached on it. (we check that later)

and now we take off the big rail and finally see the printer head:

after taking off the rail i saw a lot of foam and 2 big tubes:

lets see if my printer leaked alot of inkt:

wow that is a lot of leakage for the 8 cartridges i have used in this printer. at 15 euro a cartridge for 8ml inkt i am guessing there is laying around 50 euro's in the bottom and this picture 2,5 cm foam epson expected to steal alot of inkt?


on to the other parts i found a power supply. (always handy to have a extra)

taking off the possible wlan card and it indeed is one:
model: WLU3090-D69(RoHS)
2.4GHz Wireless LAN Mini USB Module

mainboard seems to contain a realoid processor. not sure what i should do with this?.
and as always when i touch a mainboard / motherboard i cutt myself :/

back to the WLAN card i decided to give it a try since it was USB to hook it up to my PC it seems to get recognized but cannot find drivers. anyone know where to get these?


on to the scanner head taking it out of eachother:

it contained another motor but smaller:

and the scanner light: i didnt expected this but it actually was R-G-B probally with LEDs but have to check that out.
i accidently gave it too much power and killed it


so total result of this little project:
2 big motors
1 small motor
1 power supply
1 wlan card
1 mainboard
1 buttonboard
1 LCD
and a printer head (i have a 800x digital microscope on the way so expect a closeup soon )
and alot of screws


was alot of fun to take this apart
the epson printer is definately not made for service as some parts need to be broken to take parts out. you cannot put this printer back together as you have to break several parts. so that is why they never repaired it. really bad service of epson and a bad design (focusing on repairs)

currently i am using a canon all in one printer with a CISS (Continous Ink Supply System) with bottles of ink 100ml at 4 euro they wont fake me anymore
hope you enjoyed reading this report

[RGB LASER VERKOOP]

nice !

next report about a laser hi hi hi hi

[mikkojay]

Printers have all kinds of great little parts and pieces- you just need to be cautious while dismantling (as your finger can testify)

[CountFunkula]

Laser printers are even better laser part sources! Lots of nice gears and stepper motors, collimating optics, a VERY usable spinning polygonal mirror, and some other first-surface mirrors. The most common laser printer diodes aren't terribly useful (near-IR, ~780 nm), but still cool.

Frequency doubling/Sum+Difference/Nonlinear Optics experiments, anyone?

[hobbybob]

The ink you found in the foam is ink that is wasted everytime the printer does a cleaningoperation.
A wiper wipes the head and then some ink is sprayed out of the head.
This is only a 8ml ink cartridge. I did some maintenance on my largeformat printer (that had 6x220ml cartridges!!!).
Every few months i had to empty the 500ml!!!! waste bottle.... aaaargh my precious ink!

Then i sold up the lot and used the money to buy laser equipment.
Boy was that an economic change over ..... NOT !!!!
Financialwise i had better stuck with printing, but then i would have missed all those photons ;-)

[laserwinkel]

220ml cartridges wow thats a big cartridge

anyways here is the close up of the printer head ( not as special as i would have expected :/ )