Jigsaw Puzzle

Taking Apart HP Photosmart C4280 Printer for Parts || Cleaning || Repair...

Not the best video in the world, but it was good enough for my purposes.

I have an HP Photosmart C4385 All-In-One machine (similar to the one in the above video) that I use maybe once or twice a week. I use the scanner about as often as the printer. It is an ink-jet machine which requires ink-jet cartridges which cost a couple of bucks which discourages frivolous printing. I've had it for years (previous appearance here). 

A couple of months ago it started acting up, complaining that the carriage was jammed. It was easy enough to clear, just open the front door and push the carriage to the left a couple of inches and it was happy. But then I got the bright idea that maybe it could stand a little cleaning. I mean it's been operating reliably for years, surely it deserves a little maintenance. So a couple of weeks ago I opened it up. Now I'm wondering what to do. The main shaft is coated with a thin layer of some kind of grease. Should I clean it off? And if I do what should I use to replace it? That question stymied me for a couple of weeks.

See the shiny metal bracket in the center of the picture? Had me stymied for a bit. It was fairly obvious that one end was secured by a screw holding down the main board, but if the main board is already in place, the other end is left hanging in space.  Rotate 180 degrees on the Y axis and put it under the main board and now it connects tot the chassis. You can see the tongue poking through the slot.

I came across the black plastic piece near the top after I had the machine almost completely assembled. Had to backtrack a bit fit it into place.

Today I finally sat down to put it back together. I just wiped off the shaft and the timing strip and reassembled it, I didn't bother with any new grease. It was pretty obvious where most of the parts went, but there were a couple that took a bit of figuring to figure out where they went. But I eventually got it all back together. If I hadn't waited a couple of weeks I probably would have remembered where they went and it wouldn't have been a problem, but where's the challenge in that?

Anyway, put it together and turned it on and the little blinky lights start blinking. Ain't supposed to do that. Wiggle the ribbon cable where it plugs into the main board and the lights come on and go off, but none of my wiggling makes it happy. So while it was an entertaining puzzle to disassemble and reassemble, from a practical standpoint it was a waste of time. Off to the landfill it goes. Probably will consume 20% of my weekly allowed volume of trash.