Make: Projects
USB Card Reader from a Dumped USB Printer
A USB color printer sitting in a dumpster can be gutted for bits and pieces, some of which become a standalone USB card reader.
The colour USB fax printer was begging to be liberated from the dumpster. As well as stepper motors, drive cables and shafts, I was keen to see if I could repurpose the SD card reader built into it.
Steps
Step #1:
Next
- This is the victim. An unloved Lexmark scanner/fax/printer. Note the card reader on the front panel.
- On removal of the scanner lid, a nice stepper motor and gear assembly is found. It's a keeper. The front panel LCD display looked very OEM and difficult to use, but there were a bunch of tactile switches to be had on the front panel PCB.
- On getting into the innards of the printer, it turned out that the card reader was not just a PCB-mounted card slot as I had assumed, but a standalone USB card reader in its own right... ripe for the picking. Note also the nice 8-ohm speaker attached to the side wall, and some nice RF suppression ferrites on various cables.
