Printable View
Found a large lawn & leaf bag full of printers the other day so I grabbed it. Tore appart the first one (a low end Lexmark) and was surprized to see how little metal there was in it.
There were a couple of small cards and about half a pound of steel. I saved the cartridge of course since that's probably the most worthwhile part.
Are any of these worth fooling with? There are a couple of HPs in there.
Traditionally printers don't carry much value. If you have a good local plastic buyer and you can bale the material, then it would be. We move around 400,000 lbs of PC, ABS, HIPS per month. Good baled material and weight, depending on its source can run $.10/lb to $.20/lb.
If they have card slots, there will be a board in there that is pretty good. And of course the ink cartridges have their value. Probably a couple of small motors to toss on the pile as well as some brass pieces here and there.
Only takes a few minutes to smash it apart and get those items out. Oh, and the wires of course get tossed in the wire bin.
I get .1 as of right now selling them whole. There are some motors and boards on the side of the printer but not worth the time to pull it. On the larger printers getting to the board is easy and is worth the time.
the connectors are usually gold, and they usually have a high grade board in there somewhere. They are indeed a PITA, i usually wait until i have several before I mess with them, and then I am not too delicate. Take the ink cartridges out, try to get the good boards out, and then apply a liberal dose of sledgehammer medicine.
the rods can be made into very handy tools , punches chisels etc.
My scrap yard takes them whole for shred. Same with whole vacuums. Plastic and all.
Same with my yard rca. Just cut the cord and throw it in my gaylord for shred.
"insert link for the laser printer breakdown thread here"
:)
Yea, I would like to be able to sell the ABS, I get lots of it tearing stuff down but I don't have the space to keep it and haven't found a buyer yet (you'd think that would be easier, everything is made out of ABS). I did find out that the people contracting with my city are set up to handle ABS so I've been putting it in the recycle bin and letting them have it for now.
I did notice the big roller that feeds the paper is aluminum cover with some sort of gritty paint to grip the paper. No much wieght but it's going in the aluminum box.
I've posted this before but I'll do it again. You guys that are throwing printers in the shred pile are loosing alot of money. This is what I get out of printers, these are the small computer printers, fax machines and copiers will have more in them. I get at least 2 and sometimes 3 high grade boards (3.65#) 2-3 electric motors, wires, steel (some have more than others) Always breake down the print head (thats what I call it) it's the black thing that holds the ink cartreges, it has a high grade board and it also has a peice of mylar with gold dots.
Mine too. I do cut the cord, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by rca987
Hey Happy! So exactly what is a lot of money here? At $.10 per pound and probably 15-20 pounds being $1.50 to $2.00, is there more value than that? And how much time are you spending doing it?Quote:
Originally Posted by happyscraper
dont forget the gold and silver mylar, there should be gold contacts in the area where the cartridges goes, connections are always gold to gold or silver to silver
Hey Burly, if you read the post I said these are the small computer printers not the larger ones. These only weigh 1 or 2 lbs each. The biger ones like your talking about have bigger high grade boards much more wires and some have tinned memory. I've done so many of these printers I can do one in about 3 or 4 minutes.
I've noticed the small HP deskjet printers have nice boards with traces of gold. If you don't have PCs to scrap at least scrap the printer boards.