Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

[Iowatech]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

Well, as long as we are in mouse mode here, I got a call to work on a 3M 536 at a grain elevator. The 536 had a moving glass platen, and the movement of the platen on this machine was very irregular.
The machine used a rotating encoder to regulate the speed of the platen which was a disk with slots cut into it. A mouse had got caught in the encoder and was skinned, and the skin was blocking some of the slots in the encoder disk.
That was quite possibly the grossest thing I've ever seen on a service call, and I'm sorry for sharing it.

[HenryT2]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

I can only imagine your surprise at discovering the live mouse. Definitely an odd squeak you have here ma'am.

Out of curiosity, how did you dispose of the unwanted accessory in the machine? Pith'd a la science frog?

CAUTION : GRAPHIC REPLY BELOW !!

Do you remember those 14 inch long Yellow handle slim flat-tip screwdrivers ?
They make a great little hole in the head of a mouse. Then used the Roach Clip ( oops, I meant hemostats ) to grab its tail and pull it off the gear . We just put it in the trash can next to the copier, wrote up the service order ( this was not covered under the contract ) , had the secretary sign off, and we left......laughing all the way back to the shop.

P.S. We used Fedron, Lacquer Thinner, and alcohol to clean all implements involved in the " REMOVAL " of said 'Squeaky Wheel ' . YEP ! We also left that combination of aromas in the trash can as well .

[Akitu]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

CAUTION : GRAPHIC REPLY BELOW !!

Do you remember those 14 inch long Yellow handle slim flat-tip screwdrivers ?
They make a great little hole in the head of a mouse. Then used the Roach Clip ( oops, I meant hemostats ) to grab its tail and pull it off the gear . We just put it in the trash can next to the copier, wrote up the service order ( this was not covered under the contract ) , had the secretary sign off, and we left......laughing all the way back to the shop.

P.S. We used Fedron, Lacquer Thinner, and alcohol to clean all implements involved in the " REMOVAL " of said 'Squeaky Wheel ' . YEP ! We also left that combination of aromas in the trash can as well .

Not quite a pithing, but about as humane as that little mouse could ask for. The secretary probably had a much better day after you left with all those fumes permeating the office.

[Tonerbomb]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

IMG00221.jpgThis was after the flood from the sprinkler system's broken main line.

[Iowatech]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23177[/ATTACH]This was after the flood from the sprinkler system's broken main line.

Thanks for getting this out of mouse mode.
On a lighter note, I got to work on a machine in the foreman's booth at a place that did the final forming of those big coils of sheet metal you may have seen being transported on trucks. To get to the machine, I had to cross several railroad tracks and avoid the remote controlled train (there were no signals), then when I got to the building I had to avoid the coil movers (looked something like 10K forklifts, but only had one prong instead of two), then had to avoid the overhead crane that had massive hooks for moving the coils around.
As you might imagine, the obstacles were quite easy to see, still it took some time to get to the machine. No sense arguing with a piece of metal that weighs several tons after all.

[KenB]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

We had a hospital call in one time about their ( analog ) Toshiba squeaking when making copies.
When we got there and tested the copier, it did indeed squeak .
The cause was found when we removed the rear cover . A mouse was hung in the main drive gear and as it turned ;
the drive chain would mash ( that's southern for ' squeeze ' ) it's tail ,and it would make a noise.
We had to kill the mouse to get it out . The secretary was not thrilled to see the cause of the noise.

Some 25 years ago I took a call on a Canon NP7550 in a print shop that was skewing on the trailing edge.

Not an uncommon problem; was almost always caused by an issue with the separation corona. I pulled it out, and it was fine, so the problem was further back.

I took the back cover off, and sho' 'nuff, there was Mr. Mouse, the sep corona HV cable impaled on his little fangs. Yum. Needless to say, he was quite fried.

I removed the little varmint by grabbing one of his fangs with my forceps, and when I "tactfully" showed it to the shop owner, his comment was "Wow! The only Canon copied ever equipped with a mouse!". Grrrrrrrrr...

[slimslob]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

Some 25 years ago I took a call on a Canon NP7550 in a print shop that was skewing on the trailing edge.

Not an uncommon problem; was almost always caused by an issue with the separation corona. I pulled it out, and it was fine, so the problem was further back.

I took the back cover off, and sho' 'nuff, there was Mr. Mouse, the sep corona HV cable impaled on his little fangs. Yum. Needless to say, he was quite fried.

I removed the little varmint by grabbing one of his fangs with my forceps, and when I "tactfully" showed it to the shop owner, his comment was "Wow! The only Canon copied ever equipped with a mouse!". Grrrrrrrrr...

And right back to mouse mode.

[CompyTech]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

Thanks for getting this out of mouse mode.
On a lighter note, I got to work on a machine in the foreman's booth at a place that did the final forming of those big coils of sheet metal you may have seen being transported on trucks. To get to the machine, I had to cross several railroad tracks and avoid the remote controlled train (there were no signals), then when I got to the building I had to avoid the coil movers (looked something like 10K forklifts, but only had one prong instead of two), then had to avoid the overhead crane that had massive hooks for moving the coils around.
As you might imagine, the obstacles were quite easy to see, still it took some time to get to the machine. No sense arguing with a piece of metal that weighs several tons after all.

I go to a steel plant that does the coils too. Those machines get nasty...

Back to mouse mode again, I worked on this old Konica 7075 once that had a non working op panel. Inside the machine were mice turds all over the place, customer stated they had a mice problem. I opened up the control panel to find the little ribbon cable chewed thru. That was the only damage done as far as I could see. And there was no trace of the mouse other than the turds.

[vincent64]

Re: Silly locations that you've seen printers or copiers sitting.

This one was in a office trailer, up the country in my area, older sharp SF-2027 with the RADF on it, the bigger one, don't recall the model of that DF, the one that had the one way gears on the rear side that you always had to clean the shafts, it was in a office of a steel mill/foundry, they used these big hammers on the hot steel ingots to shape them, the shop had several of them, and the whole time I am there working, office is gently shaking, boom....boom....boom...ya have to work between the booms, asked them later how you got used to it, they said used to what...