retrohax.net

… or did I spend ages trying to fix it?

Intro

Like the Apple Color Slyle Writer 2200 that I had on my bench 🙂

It seemed to work but outputted blank sheets, however, before I got there, I needed a PSU to get there as the unit came in without it.

Disassembly, cleaning, and the PSU

First things first so let’s start with disassembly.

I figured that a 4A 12VDAC PSU would power this printer just fine, however, I had to replace a power socket on the PCB.

At this point, I thought this was the only problem to solve, and I didn’t know what was coming, so I assembled the printer and applied a layer of mineral oil, which rendered all scratches invisible.

Fail

All happy and stuff, I connected the printer to a computer and started testing.

The printer started spilling …. empty sheets of paper …

I was like

At first, I thought this was an issue with the ink cartridges so I ordered various NOS and modern carts from eBay.

That didn’t help at all. This made me think more. What if only the carriage is clogged and not only the cartridge?

I figured I could try unclogging it by bathing it in a small ultrasonic cleaner. First, in warm water and later in IPA.

Below, are microscope shots of the head before cleaning and after it.

Diving deeper

At this point I was clueless. I started to disassemble the carriage assembly hunting for another hidden problem round.

Some pics were taken while disassembling for future tinkerers.

While looking for a service manual, I’ve found out that Color Style Writer 2200 is a re-branded Canon BJC-80 printer.

This is crucial info as it is way easier to find some info or a service manual for the latter one. After getting a service manual for BJC-80, I figured I could test for continuity of that flex, ribbon wire.

Surely enough, there were issues 😀

Turned out that somehow, there was corrosion on the very edge of the exposed contacts. Not that obvious at first look.

Some close-ups show the problem.

Notice the green gooey.

Failed attempt

I was like … Hey! It might be fixable!

The plan was to gently remove the top kapton layer and connect the eaten traces with a 0.1mm wire. All were done under a microscope with 1mm Dremmel tip and 1mm soldering tip.

Below you can see a slightly cut and super boring video of that failed (as it turned out) repair attempt. It also looks messy as hell. Well, at least I tried 😀

Here is the result for those who don’t want to watch that lame video 😀

As mentioned earlier, that was a failed attempt, and after assembly, the printer still spilled out empty paper 🙁

Most probably, my soldering fix was too stiff and didn’t last long after the carriage started moving.

The actual fix

Knowing that this is a rebranded Cannon printer, I started looking for a BJC-80 on eBay, and to my surprise, there was a cheap and broken unit. I decided I’ll give it try and ordered it.

Turned out that the flex ribbon wire is pretty much the same. Yay!

From that point, it was just a matter of swapping the wires.

And finally, after all this, it started working like a charm!

Outro

That’s all in this post. Consider subscribing if you want to get an email notification about fresh blog posts.

See you in the next post