Seen this before ?

[EarthKmTech]

37149

Horrific

[ZOOTECH]

37149

Horrific
Have not seen that before, those KM machines must be pretty sweet! :p

[Hansoon]

To me this seems a total loss. Weird.

Hans

[Synthohol]

that's a whole lot of no thank you.

[copyman]

Wow! Have seen mice and a few spiders make a home out of copiers but never ants. Gives a whole new meaning to copiers being able to "reproduce" :cool:

Can you give more details where is was located / stored for the ants to get in? Don't think it was the warmth that they were after because they are used to living in cooler temps underground. Only thing I can think of is they were confused / attracted by the electronics of machine?

A sleazy salesman would still sell this machine throwing in an anteater as part of the deal:D

[EarthKmTech]

Yeah this machine is finished. I started out thinking yeah, I might be able to save it, but after pulling that back cover off and and revealing the nest within then opening the scanner while they were crawling up my arms and biting me I had a re-think and decided, Ah no, it's game over. Not one part of the machine did not have ants in it, all over the belt, imaging units, fusing unit etc. Uneconomical repair.

The room where this happened was unattended for 2 weeks, the ants broke in through a crack in the front window from the ground, made their way to the desk and setup home in the printer alone. Near new, low volume. No idea what attracted them to it. Be interesting if something in there is sweet smelling. They were glued all over the scanner rails but might be coincidence.

[copyman]

Sorry dude. That is a true horror story. Hopefully you'll be able to salvage some of the parts, boards, etc.

Ozone has a sweet smell maybe that is what attracted them. Ozone is a side effect of copiers for as long as I have been working on them, 30+ yrs. Ozone has always been described as "sweet".

They must be a different type of ant. Here on the Mid-Atlantic east coast the ants live underground, thank the lord ;)

[blackcat4866]

Mice, box elder bugs, but never ants. You could spend days, and cases of insecticide, ... and where would you put the damn thing while you were working on it? Not in the office. Maybe in the metal storage box.

Good call. =^..^=

[NeoMatrix]

Nice clear pics....
I have seen similar but on a smaller scale. I had a laser assembly absolutely full of ants.

I wonder what would happened if you put a shipping plastic bag over the MFD, left a slight opening in the bag, and then pumped warm air inside the bag.
Would the ants pack up home and move somewhere else ?
If the ants moved on they would take everything with them, except the dirt.
If it worked it might save for a big cleaning job.

You can hire warm air dryers from an industrial tool hire shop.

[rrrohan]

Yiu finally found a good use for a C35. An ant habitat

[allan]

37149

Horrific

That thing is sealed pretty tight where did they get in. Sure its the moisture on the stainless slider that attracted them??

[EarthKmTech]

on this c3350 the main nesting area was the rear corner piece as shown, all of the eggs were located in here . It's vertical and has horizontal ribs which kinda reminded them of an ants nest I guess, plus the convenient multilevel storage allowed their population to explode over a 2 week period. I'm no ant expert but I'm guessing there would of been a queen in there somewhere too. It will forever remain a mystery what attracted them to it, unless it happens to more then I'm going to start suspecting something like the grease etc.

[DigiMan]

Dont they sink ships to form natural habitats for fishes?
Maybe we should start doing this with copiers for ants LOL,jokes aside thats one big WTF if i ever saw one.

[copytechman]

Nope nope nope nope nope!!!

[Ratchet2501]

I can honestly say I hope I never top this one.

[allan]

If you press the start button some of them go for an amusement ride. Weeee.
Black lines everywhere!

[NeoMatrix]

Nope nope nope nope nope!!!


.....:)... Nope^64.
I wonder if the scanner has face image recognition firmware installed.
It might be able to tell us every ant details....



Big clean up job....
In the theme of the movie The Pink Panther.:o

Dead-ant-dead-ant, dead-ant, dead-ant-dead-ant dead-ant-dead-ant dead-ant-aaanntt di di da da...

[Scottb]

Im not sure where you're from but these could be your culprit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasberry_crazy_ant