A few years ago I bought a Brother HL-2700CN color laser printer for about $500 ( I decided ink-jets suck, to coin a phrase ).
The printer self destructed yesterday after processing about 1 or 2 reams of paper, which is about all I use over several years. I dismantled the printer as I usually do to see the engineering and salvage useful parts, as well as, since it weighed about 50 pounds, was way too big to just throw in the trash. It took about 8 hours to dismantle. What an astounding engineering achievement this piece of machinery is ! It must have taken many man-centuries to design. It was like a Chinese puzzle to even begin to dismantle. Even with >200 screws and plastic latches, figuring out how to open it up was quite a challenge ( brute force worked on a couple of occasions :-) ). There were many motors, fans, clutches, solenoids, thermocouples, optical sensors, printed circuit boards, microprocessors, bearings, gears, rollers, polygon laser scanner, optics etc. I'm quite astounded that something like this could be sold for only US$500! Just arranging how these hundreds of parts could be assembled must have been quite a job. Hoyt Stearns Scottsdale, Arizona US
