Musing On Murdering (….a printer)

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Having mislaid the paperwork I forget when I bought my Hewlett-Packard A3-sized colour “all-in-one” printer, for CAD use. My main printer is an HP A4-size one.

“All in one” means printer up to A3 size, photocopy and fax any size up to something random below A3, so it meant I could not make archive copies I’d hoped do, of the A3 artwork for a caving book I helped write many moons ago.

It was an odd beast, taking perhaps quarter of an hour for its automatic self-setting routine to run, accompanied by the carriage violently, noisily crashing back and forth along the length of its travel. Then when it decided it was ready it always needed help: I had gently to push each sheet forwards, while holding the rest of the stack down.

My use for it diminished as I found TurboCAD’s printing routine almost impossible (Alibre’s is not much better); and indeed my use for CAD dwindled somewhat as I found it so damnably difficult overall.

Consequently its ink plumbing clogged, and my attempts to clean it failed because, typically, any “instructions” you find on t’Net for servicing anything are never for your own version of the same make and model… I never have found my car’s replaceable “cabin air filter” for the same reason! (There is never any “help” in an IT / telecomms “Help” menu either!)

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All I did was break something in  the inky depths….

So since its supplier, Curry’s, do not have repair services a helpful Curry’s staff member gave me the number of a local, independent repairer.

The poor chap did his best. The replacement print-head assembly he managed to locate, was dead on arrival, and he was unable to find any replacement for that. We concluded the model is no longer made, as a quick look at HP’s own web-site seems to confirm.

So on Friday I paid the £50 for a “service”, and brought the dead machine home to dismantle for scrap and salvage.

It yielded very little of any potential model-engineering use: a couple of steel rods, assorted moulded-plastic gears I’ll probably never use, and a collection of small screws. The rest is some electronic scrap, a few pressed sheet-steel bits with insufficient flat area of use, and two fertiliser-bags full of plastic mouldings.

The latter made me pause for thought. The photo below (sorry about the ratty photography!) shows the largest and most complicated single plastic moulding, the base; but does not really show just how complicated it is. It is one-piece, some two feet wide by sixteen inches by six high and full of all sorts of features.

Next to it is the bulk of the complicated print-head home-location and leaning mechanism, also nearly all plastic.

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These machines are made in China (MAGA?) but probably designed “at home” by the American company. Parts-making and assembling is all mass-production though, by semi-skilled labour probably on modest pay even for their country.

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These plastic parts are extremely involved items, with innumerable rigidity-webs, hollow columns, compound curves, clips for their mating mouldings etc; and all to very high accuracy and precision so the mechanical parts screwed directly with no adjustment to the plastic will work as intended, and the case assembles to similar quality, to produce very high-quality copies and prints to pixel-level dimensions and ink control.

This positioning problem is compounded by the way the case is assembled: the mouldings are all clipped together by hidden tags that I’m afraid largely yielded to brute force and “higorance”.

The other surfaces have to be of glossy finish, meaning very highly-polished mould surfaces. The webs and columns are very thin, perhaps 1mm, so have very low draught-angles. The various registers have to be just-so.

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Designing these machines must require a group of people representing many, very advanced skills indeed, to design the “works” as such and to draw it all together by CAD at levels I could only ever dream of.  Then across the Pacific, very skilled CNC machining-centre setting to make the moulds, press-dies etc. from the files. Considerable care too at assembly-line level even if the workers need not be especially skilled.

And yes, it no longer worked but there were I, destroying it, yielding a few bits of electrickery for the WEEE skip, a load of thermoplastic our Council services likely can’t “recycle”, and two bits of steel rod for me.

 

I actually felt guilty, not so much for breaking up an irrepairable, mass-produced piece of “consumer goods” (‘orrible word) but for what its design and manufacture had involved……

 

 

 

 

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Nigel I nearly joined you I have a Epson Workforce like you one of the all in one job’s. It’s always had had mind of it’s own but the other day it decided it was not going to print in colour and I really could not find out why ! After dropping wife off at friends I popped into Curry’s to but a printer I could not find a stand alone printer just the all in one jobs and I was not impressed so I left, returning home I tried again this time it printed so we are friends but the peace is uneasy.

H

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Harry, yes it’s a job to find a stand alone printer or scanner anywhere, especially in A3 size, and if you do, they are more expensive mostly.

Regards Nick.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

That’s an astonishing piece of moulding, Nigel

… it’s a fading memory now, but I still recall what a performance it was to even measure the critical dimensions on the little KODAK 110 cameras, never mind the difficulty of making them to spec. !

MichaelG.

 

 

[dodmoleParticipant @dodmole]

All that design and manufacture just to move a printhead back and forth and shift a piece of paper.

Life would be simpler to go back to paper and pencil and the world could be saved much more quickly.

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Nicholas Curry’s did have about 4 scanners on the days I went in.

H

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Harry –

Possibly a clogged ink nozzle that the next use managed to clear. I’m a bit surprised the makers don’t sell cartridges that hold distilled water or a benign solvent, for cleaning the jets.

 

Michael –

It certainly is – planning the moulding must be as much part of the design as the shape of the thing itself.

I have the utmost admiration and respect for the technical abilities of the designers of modern industrial products like these, despite unfriendly commercial pressure on them to produce “planned obsolescence” and non-repairable goods.

 

Dodmole –

Indeed! In a flush of CAD enthusiasm I dismantled my enormous A0, parallel-motion drawing board, which was really too big and heavy for a small house anyway.

I’ve regretted that ever since but it is so complicated that with nothing to guide me, I cannot rebuild it. Then I managed to break one of the plastic rules!

The “shifting” though is to very high precision. It will print or scan colour photographs, for example. (Precision? Accuracy? Or both? I can never remember the difference!). The machine also has internal functions such as its print-head cleaning and aligning routines needing extra machinery.

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Well, I now have just an A4 printer, not much use for CAD beyond small single parts. Squeezing an orthographic CAD drawing of something like my steam-wagon’s GA, or even just its engine, onto an A4 sheet would be pointless. Small details, dimensions and other annotations would be illegible or lost.  Experts (not me!) could create a decent 3D rendering of it as small as A4, though it might not be very useful.

However, there is a possibility. The computer repairer gave me the details of another, small local printer he uses for the A3 work he occasionally needs produce. The idea being you can have a lot of prints made for the price of the machine and its ink.

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

Harry –

Possibly a clogged ink nozzle that the next use managed to clear. I’m a bit surprised the makers don’t sell cartridges that hold distilled water or a benign solvent, for cleaning the jets.

 

We had a Tektronix colour ink jet printer at work in the 1990’s that had four colours plus a cleaning solution. When you shut it down, it cleaned the print heads.

Sitting next to me I’ve got a monster of an HP Laserjet 5000 A4+A3 duplex printer that I rescued from a site that we were closing down (The Metro Cammell works at Washwood Heath 🙁 ) in 2005. I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to use the spare toner cartridge that I bought for it…

[PeroParticipant @pero]

Hi Nigel

You forgot to mention the invaluable small motors that come as part of the demolition process! And no, I have never found a use for those either.

My last demolition was of an HP inkjet Excellent printer but not used often and died due to an invasion by ants (they do horrible things to circuit boards – formic acid?). It took me hours to demolish – eventually using a hammer as it appeared designed to be constructed, not deconstructed. Outcome was the usual steel rods, plastic gears and the motors. None ever re-used and the hours spent will never be recovered.

Next one will go untouched, straight to the electronics recycling bin – life is just too short!

I now stick with lasers which are much more tolerant of long periods of inaction.

Pero

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Nigel like your thinking but not in my case when I hit the print button like most the print window opens and the print thumbnail showed the image as BW, this was just one of problems I’d had with this printer but for the moment we preserve.

H

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Harry, are you sure you have your printer settings correct. I’m not familiar with Epson printers, but in the printers I have used, there is a tick box to set the printer to print in greyscale, which will show your print in black & white in the printer preview and will print it out in black & white, even if it is a colour picture.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

The computer repairer gave me the details of another, small local printer he uses for the A3 work he occasionally needs produce. The idea being you can have a lot of prints made for the price of the machine and its ink.

Nigel, just about any print/copy shop will do large prints from your files, just go in with it on a stick and get it done, often upto A0 or more. You can also do it online and get the drawings back next day or two.

You don’t always need to print drawings if you are using CAD, quite a few people keep an old tablet, laptop or PC in the workshop where you can call up the latest drawing and zoom in and out to get whatever details you may want. Even if you do want to print and only have A4 you can add detail views etc or even resort to the good old sticky tape and join a couple of sheets together if you really need a 1:1 of a chassis rail. Otherwise just one elevation per sheet would cover most items even on  a waggon your size.

Also far easier to share CAD files around the world which would do more to save the world than send copies of hand drawn stuff by air/sea post

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

Harry –

… I’m a bit surprised the makers don’t sell cartridges that hold distilled water or a benign solvent, for cleaning the jets.

 

Consumer grade printers are miracles of value engineering but it’s partly achieved by ruthlessly minimising mechanical complexity.  That extends to the print cartridges,  where different types of ink are used to get colours.   For example, Black usually contains solid particles whilst Cyan is a liquid dye.  Both contain drying agents and adhesive so they stick to the paper, but not the same solvent.   Flushing each colour out would require an additional set of pumps. fluids and tanks; could be done, but it would add considerably to the cost.   It would probably mean redesigning the pipework as well – the ink is delivered through small-bore plastic tubes, all too easily blocked.  In short, cheap InkJet printers are consumables, not meant to be repairable, and with very few maintenance options.

The secret to getting long service out of a cheap ink-jet is to use it little and often! Frequent use doesn’t allow enough time for the jets and pipes to gum up seriously.  Leaving them for weeks on end between print sessions is asking for trouble.

One cure is to go upmarket and buy a business printer.   These tend to be more reliable, but read the spec!!!  Quite often business printers expect office work loadings, and there may be a minimum usage rate, perhaps a 1000 pages per month.   Some are happy with low intermittent workloads, others will need an £engineer to get them going again.   Brand-names aren’t helpful:  all printer manufacturers sell products between cheap and cheerful to high-end; it’s the customers job to find one that best matches his needs.

The best solution for cheap infrequent printing is an A4 black and white Laser printer.    Lasers are also available in A3 and colour, but expect at least 5x the cost of a consumer Inkjet.   They may be worth the money.

I use a Brother A4 B/W Laser for everything apart from large prints and colour.   Large prints are taken personally to a local Print shop.    Images are copied to an Internet print service who post the printed photos back.   Not ideal, because having only black and white at home is mildly inconvenient as is A4,  but the compromise works well enough for me so far.   If I did about 20% more colour printing, I’d cough up for a colour laser.    If I did a lot of photography, I might go for an InkJet with tanks.   Horses for courses again…

Dave

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

You don’t always need to print drawings if you are using CAD, quite a few people keep an old tablet, laptop or PC in the workshop where you can call up the latest drawing and zoom in and out to get whatever details you may want. Even if you do want to print and only have A4 you can add detail views etc or even resort to the good old sticky tape and join a couple of sheets together if you really need a 1:1 of a chassis rail. Otherwise just one elevation per sheet would cover most items even on  a waggon your size.

One thing that 3D CAD programs don’t seem to do is allow you to display selected dimensions on the model like you can in the drawings. This would further reduce the ‘need’ for complex 2D representations of 3D objects, with all their inherent compromises.

[Nick WheelerParticipant @nickwheeler]

I’m with Pero on dismantling printers for reuse; there’s so little of any real use that it’s not worth the time and effort in doing so. And things take up so much more space in pieces!

Now that pretty much any document can be displayed on various cheap devices, from phones through tablets to basic laptops, I don’t consider a printer to be of use for any workshop purposes. So much so that I’d be more likely to buy £200 laptop just for the workshop instead of a printer.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

It’s time to re-launch the Roland DXY pen plotters !!

MichaelG.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

What (3D) CAD does let you do is have an undimensioned isometric view, to remind you what the thing looks like, plus dimensioned 2D drawings. I find that quite useful, printed on A4 laser, in the workshop. Lets you easily add scribbled notes during machining as well. Usually, though, it’s CAD straight to CNC (where “straight” is a bit of a simplification…)

I was lucky, as an ex-employee who still gets employee pricing, to pick up an about-to-be-end-of-line colour A4 laser printer at a good price. Hideously complicated mechanically and I dare not think about dismantling the thing if it breaks although there is some info online which has helped with a paper jam in a place the manual didn’t mention. I’ve spent much more on toner than the printer cost but it’s a good little workhorse. I do admire the value engineering in these things. Isn’t real engineering about designing for the target market and not over-building? Over-engineering isn’t engineering – it’s waste!

Hides in corner with bucket over head…

[Nick Wheeler]

On Nick Wheeler Said:

One thing that 3D CAD programs don’t seem to do is allow you to display selected dimensions on the model like you can in the drawings. This would further reduce the ‘need’ for complex 2D representations of 3D objects, with all their inherent compromises.

Alibre Does

[Nick WheelerParticipant @nickwheeler]

That is exactly what I would like to do with Fusion

[Nealeb]

On Nealeb Said:

……. Over-engineering isn’t engineering – it’s waste!

Hides in corner with bucket over head…

Well said that man!

[VicParticipant @vic]

I had a Canon inkjet that stopped working. It turned out to be that all the non-serviceable waste ink reservoirs were full. Binned and replaced with an Epson.

[Nicholas Farr]

On Nicholas Farr Said:

Hi Harry, are you sure you have your printer settings correct. I’m not familiar with Epson printers, but in the printers I have used, there is a tick box to set the printer to print in greyscale, which will show your print in black & white in the printer preview and will print it out in black & white, even if it is a colour picture.

Regards Nick.

Hi Nicholas yes all the setting were as they should have been, as I’ve said this printer goes crazy at times the issue before was that I could not size the image Ive tried all the usual things from deleting the printer and re-installing which works every time I think the software is becoming corrupted at the printer I say this because when I have an ‘issue’ I’ve tried another computer with the same image a the fault still there 🙁

H

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:.

Alibre Does

 

Regrettably, this is something that Fusion 360 cannot do. Dimensioning the standard top/side/front etc views is fine, but although it will allow you to add dimensions to an isometric view, they are not correctly scaled to allow for the rotation. Still, just having the isometric view on the sheet often helps understand the 2D dimensioned views. Not quite as good as dimensioning the isometric view, though…

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I’ve done a bit of shopping around. I’m not in a desperate rush so can think about what I do and want to do.

I’ve just printed a page of a spreadsheet parts-list for completing a T&C Grinder – and though it would normally be in black I did print it in colours to keep the A4 printer happy.

What don’t I need?

– Transferring CAD files elsewhere. My drawings are only to suit me and I am not worried about all the right ISO-thingummy niceties.

– Colour, on an A3 printer. Nice but not essential. My A4 printer, an HP Deskjet 1510, can deal with most of what little colour printing I do.

– A3 copy / scan / fax. The first two may be useful occasionally but probably not enough to justify. My primary aim is to print drawings I originate, not vice-versa.

You have to be careful though, in choosing the machine. One major task I had lined up for the scrapped printer was scanning a stack of A3 artwork, mostly maps and cave-surveys, and I was not impressed to find the photocopier part was well below A3. It was probably some old American-only sheet size. I am not likely to need copy at A3 size again, but for such occasional use, it is probably readily contracted to a print-shop.

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Why do I  want /need an A3 printer?

– Purely to print drawings large enough to be legible where the subject would need scaling down to fit an A4 page.

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Can I use a spare computer in the workshop, to display drawings?

– I can see the advantages: avoiding having to print anything, the ability to enlarge or move the image about for legibility.

However, I have no lap-top, nor room in my workshop for PC + mouse + keyboard – of which I have 2 spare. So I’d need find a lap-top. And space; perhaps a swing-out shelf by each machine. It would be a pure file-reader. Using them at work, I found lap-tops physically too awkward and unpleasant to use fully.

I experimented with a small DVD player, although it has a small screen, using two USB-carried, jpg copies of Alibre drawings. They displayed but were too small and of too low resolution to be useful.

At least both TurboCAD and Alibre allows saving drawings in standard image forms so the workshop computer would need only an “ordinary” photograph editor.

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So which new printer?

This proved something rather unexpected. The colour ones are cheaper than the monochrome machines!

Exploring a major on-line retailer, Printerland I think it’s called, revealed a goodly choice of A3 ink-jet printers at modest prices. Laser and ink-tank printers are much more costly and hard for me to justify, though I’d need be careful to print something coloured fairly regularly just to keep it alive.

I could use the existing A4 machine until it runs out of ink then retire it and use the A3 one for all purposes, including envelopes (most will handle those).

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So do I buy one?

At considerably less cost than a laser monochrome machine even an all-colour, multi-function, ink-jet printer is sort of justifiable, so then do I own an [A3 + all smaller sizes] printer for everything, or use the present A4 one at home and a shop for A3 prints?

This is where I need think…

– Am I likely to need to make publishing-quality, or even full trade standard, drawings? No.

– Am I likely to need make full trade standard or full CAD-possible, drawings? No.

– Is it worth me traipsing into town to buy a print of what may be a rough, preliminary drawing anyway? No – and the ability to print at home on the day I want it is a strong advantage.

Not easy to decide!

Besides, no immediate rush. I have this long-delayed Stent T&C grinder to finish first, among lost of other projects, it does not need ever so much more to finish… and it has its drawings!

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I take the point about the low yield of owt useful from a modern printer making the mining uneconomical. The motors are probably stepper rather than plain d.c. or small synchronous ones though have only two wires, and what would I use them for? The two steel rods I recovered are at least precision-ground so potentially useful.

One of the PCBs that fell out of the ruins carries a curious acrylic bar. It took careful examining to reveal its purpose. It transferred the light from an l.e.d. on the board to a tiny red “eye” on the control panel an inch or so away from the board. Ingenious!

One item I saved is the large button cell from the electronics. It might work in my spare WIN-XP PC whose own battery has probably gone flat.

 

I put the bags of scrap plastic out in the yard, along with the two pieces I photographed, in yesterday’s rain. Consequently I spent some while this afternoon scrubbing a big black patch off the concrete, using rain-water that had collected in a bucket.

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said:

 

– Transferring CAD files elsewhere.My drawings are only to suit me and I am not worried about all the right ISO-thingummy niceties.

Though should you want to send something off for laser cutting etc it is useful to be able to export a usable file. Same if you want to send the file/s to a printers and have it/them posted backrather than have to go into town and get it done

– I can see the advantages: avoiding having to print anything, the ability to enlarge or move the image about for legibility.

So if it’s an advantage on screen why can’t you simply enlarge or move the drawing image on your PC’s screen and print out that enlarged bit and take to the workshop. Tape two or more bits of A4 together if you need.

TurboCAD and Alibre allows saving drawings in standard image forms so the workshop computer would need only an “ordinary” photograph editor.

Probably better to export as a pdf which will be better quality than a jpg either snipped or exported as the quality is not high.

As for printing envelopes I can’t remember when I last did that. Just do the postage on line and print the paid label which also saves having to make sure you have stamps.

[Author]

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