Peripheral·2,125 discussions

Can Pixma Printer/Scanners be cannibalized to act as scanners only?

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I have an old Pixma MP160 & an MP190. I separated the scanner elements from the printer body, hoping to use them just as scanners, but despite severing the printer ribbons, and motor cables, the panel still refuses to operate as scanner only.

Is there any secret button-pressing combination to override the ink empty mechanism, so I can just scan with them?

Thanks

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Clarifications

In reply to Can Pixma Printer/Scanners be cannibalized to act as scanners only?

Clarifications

No

In reply to Can Pixma Printer/Scanners be cannibalized to act as scanners only?

Most devices of this type do a self-test when they power on, so if the brain detects the feet are missing, it stops right there.

I’ve never seen one of those devices with a way to let it do scan-only.

Unfortunately if you cut ribbon cables, that may not be an good thing.

Without getting into reverse-engineering the digital signaling, it might have been possible to simply rig each sensor (e.g. ink-empty, cover open, paper jam) so that the device will go out of error-mode (e.g. pass the power on self-test)

Often the sensors are simple proximity, optical, or just switches which can be rigged to be closed or open.

From a time/cost perspective, these go for $20 on eBay, and those have a working printer.

Reponse To Answer

In reply to No

Hi,
Not the answer I was hoping for, but thanks for taking the trouble to clear up impossibility of a button-press override.

Pity really, as they chop down to quite a neat slimline scanner unit – I’d be against sourcing another working printer version off eBay, as they’d always been very thirsty consuming replacement cartridges.

You might try…

In reply to Can Pixma Printer/Scanners be cannibalized to act as scanners only?

To see if you can access the programming on the device, and like @robo_dev said, bypass the self test. You could also try to rig the driver to do the same. Good luck!

Reponse To Answer

In reply to You might try…

Thanks for the suggestion, but I’m not a programmer or reader of circuit diagrams, just one of those curious types, who unscrews redundant hardware to see if extra use can be squeezed out of the carcasses. I like to avoid giving in to built-in obsolescence, and was hoping someone might have figured out a simple step-by-step sequence to get the Pixmas to start in scan mode only before. It’s looking increasingly likely that the two scanner remains are destined to follow the printer parts that have already gone to landfill.

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