20 Dec
2006
20 Dec
'06
3:31 p.m.
At this point I should say I work for a fully
accredited DEC/Compaq/HP
maintenance company so we see a lot of printers. The most troublesome are
the newer ones, the so-called 'consumer grade' ones. Since HP won't sell
maintenance parts of these printers to the likes of us trained professionals
we have to rely on their own contracted service monkeys to 'fix' them.
This reminds me of the time a plastic gear in my cheap Sharp photocopier
failed. The gear had a D-shaped centre hole that fitted onto a shaft with
a flat on it, and said hold had worn so that it simply slipped on the
shaft.
Anyway, Sharp would not sell be the replacement part. The official reason
was 'safety' -- apprently there are high voltages inside the copier. Yes,
there are, but I would bet mains is more likely to kill me, and anyway,
they'd (a) quite happuily sell me the line output (flyback) transformer
for one of their TVs and (b) you could fit this gear witout removing the
main case of the copier). I feel the real reason for not supplying the
part was to keep their faild servoids in a job.
And I don't play that sort of game. Instead I did what I'd been planning
to do for many years and bought a lathe with milling facilities (from a
company that will supply spare parts, I hasten to add). And used that to
repair the old gear (milled a slot it int and fitted a metal key). Also
made a few other parts, rollers, etc, that were wearing.
-tony