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MACHINE MUTILATIONS

It is sad that we do not have an ASPCA to protect our copiers from people.

Here are some things that have been done to them. All these stories are said to be true. Some I witnessed, some not. I didn’t even bother with the buttocks on the platen glass stories that are always being told.

Toshiba BD25 liquid toned E-stat copier of the 70s. A print shop had one and it was dirty. Since they were used to cleaning certain of their printing equipment in similar ways, they took it out to the driveway and hosed it out. Bye bye Toshiba. Submitted by Terry from Hilord Chemical.

Lexmark printer: 2002. How we knew it was from a Home office ("SOHO, as the magazines like to say.) Jammed in the rollers was a little girl's beret. Her father wants her to pay the $60 bench charge when she gets a job. She's 3 years old.

Cookies & copiers! Andy Brooks told this story. After a service call for toner clumping up due to high humidity, he received a "burning smell" call about two weeks later. He found charred cookie crumbs in the transfer corona. The young lady explained that she put crackers in her sugar to protect it from moisture, so she figured she could do the same thing with toner!

Copier lunch. Huge machine with a lot of space around the fuser. Customer used to put his lunch in the machine to warm it up. Of course, he made sure the machine did not get any use for that time. I guess I don’t have to go on. You know what happened one day. No, I don’t know what he had for lunch. I'm just glad it was not my customer.

Junkyard copiers: After they have been traded in and picked clean, worthless machines go to the dumps, where they hopefully break them down into useful materials. One day, I had dropped off a few machines and was driving away, when I saw the bucket loader approaching the scrap pile where I had just dropped the copiers. The driver (a former copier technician with the opportunity of a lifetime?) drove straight at the copiers, immediately picking them up, squeezing and crushing them, sending toner, plastic, glass, etc. scattering, and tossed them into a dumpster. Looked about like what the T-Rex did to that jeep in Jurassic Park. It was wonderful.

Ricoh 3050. 1985 or so. Maintenance man was used to polishing drums on certain types of litho machines. Object was to remove all foreign material to get down to the bare metal that the master would wrap around. He looked into the selenium drum copier and saw a coating on the metal, so he sanded it off.

Sharp 750. 1982. Customer received new machine in a box, with supplies (toner, developer & fuser oil.) Too impatient to wait for a technician, he decided to set it up himself. Since he previously had a liquid machine, he thought he knew what he had. He mixed the clear stuff that he thought was dispersant, with the black stuff, which was toner. He poured the gunk into the toner hopper and ruined a brand new machine, by filling every possible pore and crevice with a mixture of oil, toner & developer. Submitted by Dan Bray.

Apeco. Machine was a roll fed E-stat. However, the cutter would not work any more. Apeco was long gone and no parts were available. Customer hacked and chiseled away at the feed section until he could feed pre-cut sheets into the machine. However, the cutter was part of system of turning on the exposure lamp. The customer hard-wired the exposure lamp through a push button switch, plugged directly into a wall outlet. When he wanted to make a copy, he inserted the sheet with one hand, and with the other held the button down to keep the lamp on until the sheet had finished scanning! Submitted and witnessed by Paul Szabozsick around 1978.

Toshiba 3110: 1992 or so. Was being used to hold open a farmer's gate so the sheep could get to the pasture. Copier technician picked up the machine and shaped it up and sold it. I don’t know what happened to the sheep. I hope they don’t need things to urinate on like dogs. That would reflect very badly on the copier technician's otherwise admirable revival skills.

Sharp 811: Co-worker at Sharp: Regional Service Specialist Henry told me this one, in 1981. He went to a machine in Texas. Discovered a bullet hole through the frame of the machine and through the main board. Where else would you shoot it?

Crabs & copiers: In Wrangell Alaska, the wall was adorned with a huge crab (Real. I guess you don’t have to stuff them since they have exoskeletons.) The copier was in front of the wall. One day the string and thumbtacks gave, and we wound up with crab through the platen glass. There is now a calendar on the wall.

I hate when that happens. I dropped a full toner hopper onto a drum, ruining the drum and covering me and most of the room with toner.

The worst mutilation of all, and the best story. Submitted to me in 1992 by Gary Taylor. Technician thought it would be a good idea to clean feed rollers (ancient roll fed machine in the dark ages) by wetting a rag with alcohol and holding it against the spinning rollers (which was a common way to do this in those days.) Whoops, rag got yanked into the machine and ignited by the high voltage corona, which then started burning the flammable liquid dispersant. The technician calmly grabbed a dry powder fire extinguisher and put out the fire, along with blowing the powder into the mainframe computer, and all over the room. The tech packed up and left. The customer never called to inquire, complain, or anything.

Like a sack of potatoes. Customer brought a 50 LB machine (Mita 1205 I think) in, on his shoulder, turned 90 degrees from the standard. As he dropped it down on our table to be serviced, I diplomatically told him "Whatever was wrong with the machine when you picked it up, it is now about $100 worse."

Poof! In the days when not all wiring got point to point with plug in connectors, but sometimes required screws and concentration. A technician I know installed a 24 volt power supply (with 115VAC input.) As you may have guessed, he put the 115 wires where the 24 was supposed to go. Needless to say, when he turned on the machine, 115 went to every board, every 24volt solenoid, every 5 volt diode, every chip, every LED. It was 4^th of July. They didn’t fire him for about 3 weeks after that for some reason. The machine was a rental and the insurance claim was pretty nice.

Mita 1435: Was installed and working perfectly in a home office. About one week later, they call for light copies. On service call, while discovering drum is totally shot, I notice something different about the room. It turned out they had the floor stripped and refinished. Apparently the vapors from the chemicals ruined the drum.

Ycch! Customer brought in a fax machine with some problem. Customer was a local restaurant with a reputation for really good food. Technician opened the machine and two roaches scooted away. On my orders, machine was immediately placed outside on top of the dumpster (it was about 10 degrees that day.) We called customer and told them where to pick up their machine, and that at least it was exterminated for the moment, but not to bring it back.

Fictional bullet holes. In the movie Switching Channels, Henry Gibson hides inside a copier (I think it was a Canon NP6150.) At some point, the police shoot the machine full of holes. This movie had a line that is, to me, the equivalent of "Remember the Alamo." It was said by someone who wanted to use the machine (while Burt Reynolds was trying to protect the compressed Henry Gibson) who stated "I must copy."

1988 or so. Remember when Toshiba got in trouble for selling classified stuff to the Soviet Union. I think it had to do with submarine propellers. Well, to show their patriotism, the local county offices cancelled their leases (you probably can't do that legally, but they did it) with the dealer for about 40 machines and returned them. Major financial setback for the dealer, but not a mutilation. What was more interesting was what one of the local politicians did. He arranged for the local TV cameras to be there of course. They pushed the machine off the roof of a two-story building. I think the machine was an 8812, and worked about the same after the fall as before.

Near mutilation: While delivering a rolling 1400 lb console machine to a newly renovated office building in NYC, we encountered a "free lancing" security guard who was operating the freight elevator. The machine had arrived early; before the office was to be occupied, and while major construction was going on. He made it clear that if he didn’t get $50 today, the machine might fall down one of the unsealed elevator shafts (12 floors.) One of the most unusual expense reports ever filled out.