Anyone else enjoy rebuilding laser printers? I just like putting a little bit of money into a multi-thousand-dollar piece of equipment, and getting a good printer back out of it again. We have several HP LJ 8000's, 8100's, 5si's, 4000's, 4050's, and the like. These printers are real workhorses.
Right now I have a 8000 gutted down to the frame to replace the face-down delivery unit. The unit I removed had a tooth broken off one of the drive gears (due to someone getting a little over-zealous while removing a paper jam), and was the original one in the printer. Checkign the page count, I found that this particular printer has 1,335,480 pages through it. And it really isn't in bad shape! $59 for the delivery unit and another few bucks for a maintenance kit, and this thing will be good as new!
And no bad caps in the PSU, either! Of course, it was built in the good ole' days (July 21st, 1998).
I just put a maintenance kit in an 8100 with around 875,000 pages. I think the rollers in the main tray might've been original, because they were both worn bad. The top one was still decent, though definately not new, and the bottom one was amazing. It had been worn down of all it's tread, and then when it started to slip and stall, it just pushed up on the top one and the top one fed the paper through. As a result, the bottom roller has a deep semi-circle worn into it where the top roller has been slowly wearing away at it. Never seen one that bad.
And, of course, the old 5si that has over a million pages through it, manufactured in 1996, and still works great!
It's gotten to be a bit of a thing with me, to keep track of page counts on all the main printers, and keep them maintained as necessary.
Anyway, that's been my week this week... plus I have a LJ1100 here torn down to a shell, waiting for a new fuser, pressure roller, and transfer roller. That one's made completely out of plastic, though, including the frame. I liked it better when HP made their printers out of metal. At least for the chassis....
Right now I have a 8000 gutted down to the frame to replace the face-down delivery unit. The unit I removed had a tooth broken off one of the drive gears (due to someone getting a little over-zealous while removing a paper jam), and was the original one in the printer. Checkign the page count, I found that this particular printer has 1,335,480 pages through it. And it really isn't in bad shape! $59 for the delivery unit and another few bucks for a maintenance kit, and this thing will be good as new!
And no bad caps in the PSU, either! Of course, it was built in the good ole' days (July 21st, 1998).
I just put a maintenance kit in an 8100 with around 875,000 pages. I think the rollers in the main tray might've been original, because they were both worn bad. The top one was still decent, though definately not new, and the bottom one was amazing. It had been worn down of all it's tread, and then when it started to slip and stall, it just pushed up on the top one and the top one fed the paper through. As a result, the bottom roller has a deep semi-circle worn into it where the top roller has been slowly wearing away at it. Never seen one that bad.
And, of course, the old 5si that has over a million pages through it, manufactured in 1996, and still works great!
It's gotten to be a bit of a thing with me, to keep track of page counts on all the main printers, and keep them maintained as necessary.
Anyway, that's been my week this week... plus I have a LJ1100 here torn down to a shell, waiting for a new fuser, pressure roller, and transfer roller. That one's made completely out of plastic, though, including the frame. I liked it better when HP made their printers out of metal. At least for the chassis....
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