Realcent.org

Hey all,

I never really thought much about scrapping and I joined realcent because I'm into coins. But when I saw this forum it got me interested in the idea. Anyway, I happened to see on craigslist that there is a free broken commerical sized printer. I was just wondering your thoughts on this. Can any of you give me an idea of how much and what kind of metals would be found in this? Have any of you tried one of these, is it worth the time/effort?

Also, I seem to see a lot of TV/monitors and treadmills for free on CL. Are these worth my time?

Depending on how broken it is, it could be worth far more to sell it "as is" for parts or try to fix it yourself.

Many yards will take large copier machines and printers intact as shred/tin/light iron, which is $0.12/lb where I am for a small quantities. They're usually in the 350-600 lb range. Some recycling companies will require the outer plastic to be removed first.

Taking one completely apart and sorting it is a lot of work, but you can salvage some of the better components instead of taking it apart completely:

- working parts
- used fusers and toner cartridges
- scrap motors
- scrap wire
- scrap circuit boards (several different grades depending on the unit)

Intact treadmills are also accepted by many companies as light iron/shred. It's best to pull the wires and motor first as these are more valuable components.

There are physical hazards and regulations associated with taking apart TVs and monitors. There are past posts on this topic.

Over here a commercial size printer can mean a printing press. In which case, you could be talking about a lot of metal. I attached a pic of one of the smaller types of presses that we deal with. Some others as a big as a locomotive. A lot of companies have spare/scrap little old presses like the one in the pic that are just in their way and they will often just give them away.

Or I might be way off here and you are just talking about some big old HP inkjet. But I figured I would try to get your hopes up!

Thanks for the replies.

This is not a printing press but the kind of upright printer/copier you'd find in an office building, maybe commercial printer was the wrong term.

As far as how broken it is, the ad just said "needs one part replaced"

Actually, here is the link:
http://spokane.craigslist.org/zip/2451697505.html