Unusual machines / why did they build it?

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

Re: Unusual machines / why did they build it?

I guess about the strangest machine I can think of at the moment was this massage thing. You got on a table and were covered in thick plastic while highly intensified beams of water shot on your back in different patters. It was supposed to massage you.

[mikadonovan]

Re: Unusual machines / why did they build it?

I had one of those in the field years ago. It actually ran pretty good, I guess. I never seen it much.

Way before digital copiers. Mita 900d Express. Was a modified 900d made to print reverse image transfers - like for t-shirts & coffee mugs. Had a second lense in the optics to achieve the reverse image. Special toner that was expensive as hell - like $45/gram. Had no clue it was a special machine until I ran a copy - imagine my surprise seeing a reverse image test chart that was in perfect focus. Just did a search and someone is trying to sell one!

Repos4Resale Repos4resale has just received an Xpres

[excanonguy]

Re: Unusual machines / why did they build it?

the Canon NP-4080 had a color cartridge CD unit changer that held 4 seperate color cartridges and would rotate them in and out as the customer selected for copying....This thing would give me nightmares it was such a mechanical disaster!!!!

Haha this is exactly he machine I was thinking about when I saw the title of this thread !I had several in my territory when they were new...if you disconnected the sorter with the cd changer on the side the machine would tip in that direction lol !

[copymutt]

Re: Unusual machines / why did they build it?

Mid 1970's The Savin WordMaster! Take an IBM selectric typwriter engineer a baseplate that has sensors for every key to send signals to an attached box that records everything to a cassette tape.

Then simply use the cassette tape to make more or to edit the documents.

Tech school was six weeks long. No personal computers back then.

Funniest service call ever was actually at Savin tech services in Vallhalla NY @ the time. An attractive well endowed secretary kept complaining that the WordMaster kept throwing spaces in the middle of words. Not unusual as the adjustments for all the sensors & acuators was a nightmare. One of the techs had her sprinkle talcomb powder on the space bar & let us know when it happened again. Being only a few rooms away we all arrived to view the nice perky white spots on her sweater. No charge for the fix!

[blackcat4866]

Re: Unusual machines / why did they build it?

Funniest service call ever was actually at Savin tech services in Vallhalla NY @ the time. An attractive well endowed secretary kept complaining that the WordMaster kept throwing spaces in the middle of words. Not unusual as the adjustments for all the sensors & acuators was a nightmare. One of the techs had her sprinkle talcomb powder on the space bar & let us know when it happened again. Being only a few rooms away we all arrived to view the nice perky white spots on her sweater. No charge for the fix!

I had a service call like that too. It was only one user that complained that when she wanted to make one copy, sometimes she got differing numbers of copies. Usually 10 but sometimes 12 or 102 She was of shorter stature, and was inadvertently pressing buttons with her chest. Trying to think of a tactful way to point this out I invited one of the other ladies in the office over to operate the machine, then her. Her co-worker gave me a wink, and pointed out the extra button presses. =^..^=

[HP:guy]

Re: Unusual machines / why did they build it?

Savin 7045 color liquid copier.

[mansart]

Re: Unusual machines / why did they build it?

Don't remember the model, but I believe it was a Mita box......the 20 bin sorter had a mechanism that would pull stapled sets out of the bins and drop into a side car like appendage and machine would would restart a second set of 20. To accomplish this the machine also had a re-circulating feeder. Once first set of 20 finished a little arm would pop up and slide the originals back to the feed position. And the icing on the cake was the toner add. Open a cover and set toner cart. on and press a button. Cartridge would be lowered into machine and engage with a gear. This gear would drive and pull the mylar seal off cartridge and toner would fall into hopper.

Then who can forget the Sharp 7900 with the rotating cassette.....

[Iowatech]

Re: Unusual machines / why did they build it?

Back in the day when I worked on Canon microfilm, one of the parts fiches I had was for an overhead projector for one of the smallest Canon copiers. I never saw one, and never actually looked at that fiche through the viewer, so anybody know what that was?
As far as the machines I've actually seen, my vote would be for the 3M M777. Analog machine from back in the 80's that used pneumatic sensors in the paper path, and the drum indexed. I've only seen one of those, though, never worked on it.
As for the machines I've actually worked on, the prize would go to the Canofile 250/510. Scanned 40 documents a minute to a magneto - optical disk. They would display the documents on one of the better monochrome LCD screens that was available back in the '90s, and print from what Canon called dumb printers, they were similar to the HP printer chassis of the day, but without any HP circuitry. The disks were virtually indestructible. Alas, they got priced out of existense by cheap CD-ROMs.