From Trash To Treasure…To Trash Again

A few weeks back, our area was scheduled to have the first of a twice yearly bulky trash day, where oversized and electronic waste is left at the curb for disposal.

Alas, the COVID craziness caused bulky trash day to be postponed, but not everyone in the neighborhood got the message in time. As I was riding my bicycle near the appointed date, I passed several houses with various lamps, outdated furniture, old computer terminals and used mattresses by the curb.

Strike!

One particular item caught my attention – a combination printer/scanner/fax that looked more current than the one we have at home.

Hmmm. Since the owners were tossing it anyway, I thought I’d stop by to see if I might salvage it. It might even be a fun project to undertake with one of the kids.

The moment I brought it home, my daughter was begging to join me, and we spent a weekend morning unscrewing the casing, removing and inspecting the individual components, and then looking up some youtube videos on do-it-yourself printer repairs.

After a couple of hours, we regrettably could not return it to function, so it returned to the curb. Despite our failure, we enjoyed the process of understanding how printers are assembled and learned how inkjet printers work and what the most common problems are that cause them to malfunction.

Home run!

The following day, once again on my usual cycling route, I found a newer and even fancier combination printer/scanner/fax left by the curb at a different location.

Not one to be deterred, I brought it home, dusted it off and plugged it in – the display illuminated immediately with a soothing chime. 3 of the 4 ink cartridges appeared to be full.

I gave my daughter the right of first refusal, but she’d had her fill of repair work from the prior day, so my son joined me in this new attempt. We ran some of the built-in diagnostics and were able to localize the problem to the print head, the compartment that applies ink to paper.

A few youtube videos later and we had a strong hunch that old ink had congealed within the print head in between uses, obstructing the free flow of ink and causing print to appear streaky and uneven. We ponied up $16.41 for a print head cleaning kit from Amazon as well as a new black ink cartridge for $13.41.

It took two separate attempts and a bit of persistence, but I’m excited to report that we now have a functional (and significantly more modern!) printer/scanner/fax in our home.

For an investment of under $40 and a few hours of sweat equity, we became more resourceful and self-reliant; developed new skills repairing sophisticated electronic equipment; prolonged the useful life of an object and kept waste out of a landfill; and made some memories. If I’m lucky, the kids witnessed firsthand that what separates success from failure is persistence.

(And since you are dying to know, online it retails for about $150 new. Not the equivalent of transforming straw into gold, but decent for a modern day Rumplestiltskin.)

Or Not

Just when we thought we were in the clear, and had printed a beautiful document that portended future immaculate print jobs, the printer died again.

We tried cleaning the print head a third time, even warming the solution in advance, but all to no avail. At that point we decided to cut our losses, and placed the printer on our curb in time for the rescheduled bulky trash day.

I asked my son what he took from the experience. He said he’d enjoyed taking apart the printer and putting it back together, even if we hadn’t fixed it, because it helped him visualize that something seemingly complicated was actually the sum of smaller components he could understand once he got a look at them.

I’m going to mentally file the $40 we spent as part of our continuing education fund. We tried something new outside of our comfort zone, didn’t electrocute ourselves, and perhaps the insights and confidence we gained will prepare us to rise to the next broken appliance we contend with.