My printer showed me the Light

Seven years ago we brought home an Hp HPC 1420 printer Scanner.

I was not in love with it; as time passed,  started loving and depending on this for all my work, printing furniture plans, designs, quotations and it was all good and we were the best of friends. But over the years, I started taking my little printer for granted, Not giving it the TLC it needed. It refused to print, ate up paper, just got jammed. I started hitting it, shaking it to make it work. I called it names even. I am not proud of it. Then one day It Died. That’s it NO warning, no intimation, that’s it!  D.E.A.D! Finito!

We tried everything to try to make it work but it won’t budge. We had to accept that It was over and we needed to move on. So we purchased an HP6510 printer and we are happy again. Though my printing at home resumed again, My old printer still sat there gathering dust and being sad and forlorn. Some months passed and we still were wondering what to do with the old printer.

Earlier this month we went to pune for a fortnight , The hubby was working and I was bored. We visited the Pie lane studio and I purchased some Embossing tools and stencils. This was my first try.

Love the owl.. And I knew, I was hooked. While taking to the proprietor, He suggested taping the stencil and the paper to a glass window and emboss or to use a light box.

After looking at various options to how to d.i.y a light box , I picked on my hubby’s brain. And boy! Did he have a brain wave. He said he could convert the old printer into a light box! That was it.. It was just want I wanted. Brilliant!

It was his project from start to finish and took about 2.5 hours.

This is our printer Just before my hubby got to work on it.

First he removed the cartridges and then the front and back flaps.

There were four screws holding the whole thing together. First he tried using a long handled screwdriver to unscrew it, only to realize that we needed an Alan key.

After an hour the hubby was able to take out only two screws, luckily on the two diagonal ends. Another 15 mins went by and he just lost patience and yanked the two sections apart and yes it broke.

The good thing was that, In spite of it being broken, because the two diagonal screws were intact, it could be put back together.

Next he went on to remove the internal guts of the printer. As he progressed, he kept inspecting the parts that he could salvage and reuse like motors etc.

The discarded parts were really pileing up now.

Once All the printer was gutted he started work on the scanner bed.

The portion below the scanner was one sheet of plastic and was essential when putting it all back.

The only work around was cutting a portion of the plastic with a small saw.

Next was installing the Light. That was the simplest bit of the whole thing. There was one of the existing steel plates of the printer. The wire was tightly wedged between two screws that adhered the plate to the bottom plastic.

Using one of the existing holes in the printer, the hubs let the wire out of the box and then added the Plug to the wire.

He then put back the printer exoskeleton back together and added the front flap for good measure.

And then we plugged it on and there was Light!

Here It is , In use as a Light Box

I am Loving it!