Therapeutic Disassembly

[TerraHertz]

On Saturday morning I had a dentist appointment. Events could be summed up as 'not good news'. I'm at that stage of life when pretty much everything is downhill. Driving home a little depressed I spotted a tower-PC carcass by the road, so stopped to pick it up. AMD Athlon, pre-SATA ports, DRAM gone, no HD. I'd have left it, except... I've always found a little therapeutic disassembly helps when I'm in a bad mood.

Back home I had a quick look inside the power supply before trying it to see if it's worth keeping, or stripping. Nope, it's had a sparky accident. (Can be seen in the pic.) And so, it became salvaged components.

That helped a bit, but really only an appetizer. Needed something with a bit more body to it. That would be you, Mr Digital Photocopier, that's been sitting around getting in the way for months. Another street tossed find. Since it was 'digital' I'd hoped it would contain a hard disk, and maybe worth keeping to use. An office-style unit, A4 + A3. But no, it was an early form, digital scanning to memory then laser printing, but no HD storage, and incredibly no network connectivity either. Boy, what were they thinking? It worked, but had that 'won't pick up paper reliably' problem copiers get once the tray pickup roller rubbers loses their necessary tackiness. There are ways to fix that, but really, I don't need the thing enough to be bothered.

Some 'death of a photocopier' photos below.

There's nothing in such units that I don't already have more than enough of. For eg see the pic of my 'box of steel bars' - all printer and photocopier rods, and very useful when I need some nice polished steel or stainless rod.
So I should stop doing this. But it's still interesting.

[SeanB]

I do the same, just most of the steel is scrap and goes into a drum for recycling, along with pretty much all the screws. Copper from the transformers gets put in a smaller bin for recycling again.

[calexanian]

I like the Therapy cat in the picture. I was kind of half hoping to see the multifunction unit in pieces at the bottom of a smoldering crater in the ground after a pound of black powder had been poured in it and set alight!

Ok, I was all hoping for that.   O0

[TerraHertz]

I do the same, just most of the steel is scrap and goes into a drum for recycling, along with pretty much all the screws. Copper from the transformers gets put in a smaller bin for recycling again.

Gasp! You toss the screws! How can you bear to? 
Apart from my 'bought fixings' storage, I have several big tins for screws. One for Japanese/metric, one for US (ridiculous imperial threads), one for stainless (mostly more US threads), one for rack cage nuts and screws. Those are all big cake-tin size, where the limit is what I can easily lift. Plus random smaller oddments.

I'm lucky to live near to a really great company that makes fasteners, plus buys in and warehouses lots more they don't make. The owner is a great guy, and set up a small shop on the premises. So anyone can buy from their huge range of stuff, at incredibly cheap prices (compared to Bunnings.) There even precision stainless bolts are cheaper than crappy Chinese bolts from Bunnings.

Plug: http://www.premierfasteners.com.au/

I like the Therapy cat in the picture. I was kind of half hoping to see the multifunction unit in pieces at the bottom of a smoldering crater in the ground after a pound of black powder had been poured in it and set alight!

Ok, I was all hoping for that.   O0

Heh. We did something similar with a microwave oven once. Large amount of flash powder, with some steel wool inside the oven. Powered it up via a long extension cord. Blew the oven to bits. Party trick. Luckily the door flying off didn't hit anyone.

You've given me an idea though. Next  photocopier I find gets this:
Put copier in large garbage bag. Flush bag with pure oxygen. See how well a photocopier burns in pure oxygen.

[SeanB]

Tossing the screws is easy, especially when the can of screws is full, and the others are full as well. As most are common chinese self tappers and machine screws I have plenty of them. Odd ones or longer ones I keep, but the common ones and the security bit ones go for scrap.