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...
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Just Printers?
Right now we receive a wide variety of things. Receiving takes printers, scanners, faxes and anything else that looks like it deals with paper back to Printerland. 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, goggles and wearing an apron. 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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:
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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Printer Links
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