52 Projects:Baked I/O Board

Oh no...not another cooking post. Well kind of.

My tank of an HP LaserJet 2300 stopped working the other day. I was able to print a settings page and found out the I/O card was no longer being recognized by the printer. Last I checked these were around $300 bucks - cheaper than a new printer but still. So I started searching the intertubes and found this article:http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/51585

It suggested "baking" your I/O board. Right - I wonder how many they got with that one. A day or so later I was talking with my friend Jeff who's involved in the electronics industry. I told him the story and he said it'd probably work. Something about cold solder joints and remelting the solder. Well what the heck - the board was likely shot anyway. Lets try an HP EIO board bake off!

I took out the board

Took the plastic bits off the board

Fixed up a baking sheet for my board

Fortunately the oven was preheated

Because Fran was making bacon for potato salad (I sure hope the board doesn't give off too many toxic fumes)

I baked my board for about 8 minutes (I was going to do 5 but lost track of time)

And TA-DA - the printer works like new!

Still think this was a bit crazy but - hey took about 30 minutes and saved $300.