Saturday, March 5, 2011

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

IMG 0516

IMG 0515Took the plastic bits off the board

IMG 0508Fixed up a baking sheet for my board

IMG 0507Fortunately the oven was preheated

IMG 0499Because Fran was making bacon for potato salad (I sure hope the board doesn't give off too many toxic fumes)

IMG 0504I baked my board for about 8 minutes (I was going to do 5 but lost track of time)

IMG 0505And TA-DA - the printer works like new!

IMG 0519

IMG 0520Still think this was a bit crazy but - hey took about 30 minutes and saved $300.


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