Taking printers apart-- sometimes permanently, sometimes to make them work better-- can be a lot of fun. Welcome to Printerland, aka Printer Island. We're now in the middle of the Warehouse and we've got a new look. Still making lots of changes, and the space is a bit of a mess, but here goes nothing...
Just Printers?
Right now we receive a wide variety of things. Receiving takes some of it into Printer Island, and sorts the rest of it according to Printer Triage (we use a different triage to figure out what to test and keep, below). Our incoming pile is in the Warehouse, just next to the door to Evaluation.
How To Run Printer Island
These are your basic responsibilities:
- Supervise deconstruction.
- The supervisor makes sure that everyone taking apart printers is using gloves and goggles. The supervisor makes sure everyone has tools, knows how to use them properly, and works safely. The supervisor makes volunteers aware that there is no smashing, banging, throwing or dropping of machines allowed. They also make sure that no faxes, scanners or toner cartridges will be taken apart. People are going to ask you a lot of questions. Supervisors answer those questions.
- Sorting. The supervisor sorts or supervises someone who sorts.
- A general rule for handling input is this: if there is too much stuff take it to the Sorting table (4) and process it according to the Recycling Prep page there. The general idea here process things a little bit before putting them in the Recycle box (3) and to keep Toner, Fluorescent bulbs and Glass off the bench and away from volunteers. If you are really afraid to destroy something that might be useful, consult the Testing section below to see what might be good to save for testing.
- Move boxes here and there.
- See Navigating Printer Island Each item on that page has a number that corresponds to a sign in Printer Island 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 Printer Island regularly.
- Make sure the area is swept and tidied up at end of shift.
- There is a broom and a dustpan in a drum to the left of the big warehouse. Put little leftover printer bits into a cardboard box. Please don't dump this box into the gaylord! Set it in there gently, open side up!
- Thursday is Rapid Refill day
- 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 stripped cartridges can go on the toner pallet in boxes. I help Rapid Refill grab Clean Toner, Chipped Toner and any stacked boxes of ink cartridges that we have and load it in their vehicle. It's a good idea to pull their car up to the warehouse doors if it doesn't interfere with other warehouse activity.
Sorting
Check the white board for special requests.
All Okidata's should be set to the side and kept.
The following should be run through Recycling Prep page to get it ready to be recycled.
- All fax machines (this does NOT include All-in-ones)
- All HP 800s and below (except Laserjet 4, 5 & 6),
- All scanners that require & are missing power cables.
The following should be tested (see Testing section below)
- All HP 900 and above (except the 1000 series)
- All scanners with USB power or with power cords on them.
- Anything else that looks new and looks like it will work.
The following should be set carefully on the Skip pallet:
- All copy machines.
- All ancient and heavy machines.
- Anything leaky (it should be contained).
Testing
Let's reuse as much as we can! This is a more general look at testing things. If something cannot be made to work (with the exception of the Laserjet 4, which we keep under the bench marked: (1)) it gets processed by someone authorized according to Recycling Pre
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:
We also test network cards recovered from machines:
Recycling
Recyclable printers and related gizmos are in the "Recyclables" gaylords in Printer Island, to be processed according to what's on the Whiteboard (3).
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