Old Printer Parts

Gents,

Many moons ago, in a previous existance, I used to repair large scale printers as part of my job and accumulated some bits which I thought wpould be usefull.

Fast forwarding 35 years to the present day I've found a piece of stainless rod just the right size for my next project. Thing is has anyone any idea what grade it might be, and if indeed any of it's worth keeping?

Regards,

Paul

I also have stripped out many large and small printers for the screws and round bars. I have found that some of the real cheap rods are chromed mild steel. The majority though are stainless. Some magnetic some not. I keep them all as they will come in useful one day. They are all made to a very tight tolerance so handy for many applications.

Ideal for making studding and small parts.

regards

Does the chromed mild steel cut ok?

Cheers

The stainless ones that I've salvaged have cut beautifully. Treasure them.

Over the years I have constructively destroyed a good number of printers, scanners and photocopiers for those lovely shiny guide rod innards. That which I have butchered to date has been a pleasure to machine.

Rik

Got two old printers to strip, I value the metal rods too.

Are there any other parts worth looking for? From what I can remember the rest seems to consist of loads of plastic bits and gears and odd electronic bits which would be no use to me unless someone can suggest if anything there might be useful. Plus of course the glass plate from the scanner bit, and maybe some springs and screws.

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 01/11/2018 18:08:50

Yes it does.

regards

Excuse the aside but - Any of you printer guru`s know of a driver source, for an old pen plotter please? Parallel port type

There are quite a few useful parts in old printers , when I junked my last one I got a couple of 6mm rods which were chromed and precision ground , I used one for the displacer rod on my rhombic drive hot air engine , it was solid so to reduce weight I drilled it through from both ends to give 0.5 mm wall thickness , it drilled very easily so must have been a freecutting steel and stayed dead straight so has worked out perfectly for this engine.

regards Geoff

Try here http://www.winline.com/evalpen.html they seem to support most HP plotters, but not tried it myself - my last plotter is still in the attic gathering dust!

This is a quite expensive paid driver, but I have been told that it works well - there are other free drivers on the web, but these all seem to come with 'update all your drives in one go' software that I don't want on any of my systems.

The HP site still lists a driver but for Windows XP only.

Nick

Edited By Nick Clarke 3 on 02/11/2018 08:28:54

Scanners sometimes have nice stepper motors.

Don't be put off reusing old printer parts if - like me - you get unlucky early on. I'm not sure which printer it came from but one of the ex-printer rods in my junk box turned out to be unusably hard. It may have come from a scrap office dot-matrix printer rather than a domestic inkjet. However, I must have stripped a dozen or so old printers by now and all the other scrap rods have machined well.

Dave

Hi Rod I have used Driverguide for many years and have great results from them. **LINK**

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Good Luck

regards

Thank you Gents, the piece I have is beautifully straight and round, almost a shame to chop it up, but I'll give it a whirl over the weekend and see how it goes,

Paul