Printers

Taking printers apart-- sometimes permanently, sometimes to make them work better-- can be a lot of fun. Welcome to Printerland. We're located just inside the Warehouse, to the left of the door near System Evaluation.

Just Printers? Printerland is responsible for printers, multi-function printers, faxes, and scanners. Receiving does not accept copiers, and they check machines that look like copiers to make sure they have means for connecting to a computer or network. If we inadvertently receive a copier, we recycle it without disassembly. How To Run Printerland These are your basic responsibilities: Supervise Deconstruction The supervisor makes sure that everyone taking apart printers is using gloves, goggles and wearing an apron. The supervisor makes sure everyone has tools, knows how to use them properly, and works safely. The supervisor ensures that volunteers are not smashing, banging, throwing or dropping of machines. The supervisor also makes sure that no faxes, scanners or toner cartridges will are taken apart by volunteers. Volunteers may have a lot of questions. The supervisor answers those questions. Sorting - The Supervisor Sorts or Supervises Someone Who Sorts The idea here is that we want to sort the stuff that comes into Printerland so that we have some things to test and so that we isolate Toner, Fluorescent bulbs and Glass from the stuff that we want to recycle. Anything that we are going to recycle should be tallied on the clipboard hanging in the incoming area. Power Supplies, Ink and Toner this section under construction March 2011 -Darryl Checklist See Navigating Printer Island Each item on that page has a number that corresponds to a sign in Printerland so you can see what goes where. At the bottom of that page there is a general checklist of things that need to be done in Printerland regularly. Clean Up After Shift There is a broom and a dustpan in a drum to the left of the big warehouse. Put little leftover printer bits and floor sweepings into the printer scrap gaylord. Wed / Fri - Bulk Buyer Mike Kerr Mike Kerr comes in Wednesdays and Fridays to buy printers that we've set aside for him on a steel wire rack in the northeast corner of Printerland. A list of things we save for Mike Kerr is posted on the incoming shelves. Thu - Bulk Buyer Rapid Refill Mike from Rapid Refill comes in on Thursdays to collect toner and ink cartridges. We collect toner in plastic bins that we save for Rapid Refill near the southwest corner of Printerland. Mike of Rapid Refill drops off toner cartridges that they cannot refill (we call this "processed toner cartridges"). this section under construction March 2011 -Darryl We do a commodity exchange on Thursdays. Mike or Jim from Rapid Refill will come by and donate printers, give us stripped cartridges in large boxes, and take ink and toner from us. The donated printers go to Receiving. The stripped cartridges can go on the toner pallet in cardboard boxes on the pallet between the plastic and scrap pallets. I help Rapid Refill grab Clean Toner, Chipped Toner and any stacked boxes of ink cartridges that we have under the evaluation bench and load it in their vehicle. I also check Receiving to see if they have any extra boxes of cartridges we can give them. It's a good idea to pull their car up to the warehouse doors if it doesn't interfere with other warehouse activity. Rapid Refill will also give us circuit board material that they remove from their failed cartridges. I keep a cardboard box of them on the top shelf to the left of the hazardous box. Today is also the day (it doesn't happen every Thursday) that is convenient to ship the non-chipped cartridge pallet, i.e. the one between plastic and scrap, to Far West Fibers. When that pallet is stacked high enough it needs to be shrink wrapped and loaded into the truck. Sorting Check out Printer Sorting. Here's what we test: Printers to Test Is it too heavy, leaking, hazardous? See Skip Pallet Triage Testing Here's some more specific information on how to use the computers and how to deal with specific models: Printer Testing Howto The object of the game is to get a printer to print out one of these test pages. If we can do that and it looks good, we stick that test page on the cleaned-up printer and write "Tested Ok" on the page. If we used in-house ink (ask your superviser as it's hidden), we, mark the test page accordingly. Don't forget to include a power cord, and then ask a supervisor to check it off before shipping it off to the Store or the Grant Shelves! Here is a more specific look at what to do with each kind of machine: Inkjet Testing (including All-in-ones) Laserjet Testing Scanner Testing Fax Machine Evaluation We also test network cards recovered from machines: Printer Network Card Testing Recycling this section under construction March 2011 -Darryl ------------ Recyclable printers and related gizmos are in the "Recyclables" gaylords in Printer Island, to be processed according to what's on the Whiteboard (3).

Printer Links Staff schedule: Find out when Printer Island is open. tonsoftoner.com: Find out what ink/toner a printer model takes. inkreference.com: Or vice versa. fixyourownprinter.com: A good reference for printer errors. printertechs.com: A reference for Laserjet error codes.