I have 8 commercial copiers to pickup this week. Is it worth it to break them down for the boards? Or should I just pass them on?
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I have 8 commercial copiers to pickup this week. Is it worth it to break them down for the boards? Or should I just pass them on?
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I usually will pull any easy to access boards, and then pass the rest on to a company that takes my CRT monitors etc. One thing to check if you tell your customers that you protect their data is make sure and pull any hard drives if the copiers have them - they could contain images that have been scanned and address books that should be wiped/destroyed.
Sledgehammer Enthusiast
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There ain't nothing wrong with an honest days work. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool.- Old Man
Experienced Scrapper
The best part about copiers are the stepper motors inside of there. I personally think that those sold on ebay or to the robot crowd could do very well for you depending on the motor in there. The copiers use much better stepper motors than laser printers. I know that is a place where people are told to look is old copiers and laser printers for stepper motors to use in their projects. I just don't know which ones are better than others.
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Heavy you don't want to move them 4 times (pick up, remove for break down, re load, add to the steel pile at the scrap yard). Load them so you can break down in your truck bed or trailer. And they have good boards and memory as well.
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easy to get to boards and memory...rest is shred...not worth the IMMENSE effort to get it broken down
PROFIT is made when you BUY/ACQUIRE NOT when you sell
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I agree with hobo. I picked up three one day, loaded them up and took straight to the scrap yard. Made 130.00 in about 1.5 hrs. Make sure your yard will take them first.
Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
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i usually do good selling the formatter boards on ebay,,,some are no good of course...any of the cards on the back that say jet direct are also worth looking up...most of the time all the good stuff is in one area...like a metal box..break some plastic and pull a few screws and it usually slides out....i just got a formatter board, with a hard drive,ram and fax card out of a large hp that is going for 200 pluss on ebay...
i just listed mine tonite wish me luck
Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
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They are chock full of things needed and wanted by hackers, gadget modifiers and tinkerers. Precision shafts with matched bearings, toothed belt drives and pulleys, stepper motors as mentioned, optical lenses and mirrors, solenoids, and linear drives in some. Anyone wanting to build their own small format CNC device would be into these parts and components.
With a little experience they can be stripped down in a couple of hours. Just my biased opinion as an amateur hacker, but the guts of copiers are worth more than the scrap value you get after stripping.
One downside of completely stripping them is the plastics, you get a big stack, not heavy, more bulky.
If it wasn't for the laws of physics, I would be unstoppable.
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Since my yard will take them as shred, I remove the side cover and pull any hard drives, memory and circuit boards. I scrapped 5 this morning and it took maybe 30 minutes. Got some nice boards and memory and about 200 pounds of shred.
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I always pull boards and toner...those alone are usually 10-20 bucks per machine, the rest with a weight of about 220-280 lbs ends up as shred...another 20 bucks or so. If I bid on these things no matter where they are I will bid on at least 4 at a time or the gas and handling isn't worth it. You can take the time to look up the machines with servicable parts on ebay...like has already been suggested reuse is always the first priority. I got a hold of a Konica Minolta for 21 bucks and sold it after two hours of cleaning an internal toner spill with a vacuum and an air gun for 300. It still left a dot on every four or five pages about the size of a pinhead but the buyer could've cared less.
My rules for laser printers and copiers:
Does the machine print at all? IF it does, skip the diag...
Pull the error codes. Hop on the internet to look for the common issues and fixes (low to no cost). Such as baking formatter boards and so on. Some of the cheaper machines simply get thrown out when it runs out of a 200 dollar toner cartridge after a few months...which leads me to ask:
Age of machine: If it is pre:Windows 2000 throw it out even if it works...that goes for workgroup printers and copiers too, they use more consumables than newer printers and businesses know this.
If it is out of toner after fixing it, you can still use it, I have a kit that refills toner. It's a simple process that isn't messy if done right. A hot iron pokes a hole in the reservoir and the waste section, both are sucked out with a small vac extension (I use a shop vac with a hepa filter that is just for this) and refill them all with bulk toner I get on ebay. Never fails to work, sometimes it requires a small chip to be swapped sometimes not...depends on brand.
Never scrap just to scrap. Copiers on craigslist that work and have toner go for 200 bucks all day long, in my area when I post one that I just serviced it's often gone in a few hours. Don't forget to add "You must provide the manpower and method of transport". I do hope this helps. I'm sitting on some cadidates myself that I haven't been able to clear the mess around them to service yet. Caveat...you can generally print or display the service page that tells you total pages and interval since last service often with a percentage remaining on things like toner, the drum and so on. If any of this stuff is in obvious need of replacing BESIDES toner, such as the drum, scrap the machine.
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