Saturday, January 06, 2007

successful printer surgery

The printer surgery was a success. Here are a few notes for anyone else going this route.

In general, the instructions that came with the new belt were clear. Do be sure to open the lid while the power's connected so the printer cartridges slide into the middle of the axle. Then unplug the printer and begin surgery.

I got confused removing the printer's end caps. The instructions say "there is a plastic tab on the front and back sides of the printer." If you turn the printer over, you will see two tabs. These are not the tabs you're looking for. Instead, you want tabs along the front and back edges:

Here's a close-up of the clip. The bottom part is slanted. A piece of metal fits between it and the top one.

That means you'll be putting your screwdriver into the little slot between the metal and the plastic when you're levering the plastic away.

Also, there's a sort of printer cess-pit on the right side. I think that's where the cartridges relieve themselves during cleaning.

Do not (as I did) accidentally drop the spring into the cess pit or you'll have a cleaning job on your hands. Um, all over your hands, actually.

In any case, surgery was a success. The new belt seems to be working happily.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wondering if you would share your genius. I have my DeskJet 722C apart, replacement belt in hand, and cannot figure out how to remove existing belt from the carriage. Please reply to eloms@look.ca if you will. Many thanks!

Anonymous said...

I have the same problem. I do not know the names of the parts.....PCA cover, service station motor cable.....I'm in health care and am finding this very challenging!
Would appreciate any instructions to pt5555@aol.com.
Thanks!

False Data said...

Sorry, I know very little about the 722C (or most of the other printers, for that matter). I was able to get the 812C running again, but it's clear the printer's aging: not too long afterwards one of the bearings that guides the paper fell off.

Since that time we still have the 812C but it's been relegated to occasional printing duties.

Our primary printer is now a Canon Pixma iP6700D: it's not much faster, but it has a pretty inexpensive black replacement cartridge and (critical for me) it can automatically print on both sides of the page without needing the "take the pile of papers out, turn them around this way and that, then run them all through the printer again" routine. I haven't tried the Canon with a Linux server yet, though.