UPS: "Do not connect laser printer..."

[Rich Grise]

What is it about laser printers that causes UPS manufacturers to recommend
they not be powered by a "stepped approximation to sine" UPS? It's a SMSP,
isn't it? What makes it special such that it needs sine-only? No such caution
re. computers, etc...

"Do not look into laser beam with remaining eye." ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[krw]

I can get an "almost half-gallon" (1.75L) of Prestige Vodka for $8.99 plus
tax. ;-)

Listerine is $5 at WallyWorld.

 

[krw]

My guess is that someone thinks you can mix ammonia and various household
items to make a bomb,

Ah, but you can! I did it all the time when I was in high school.
Nitrogen triiodide is fun stuff. ;-)

but what I think happened is that someone who
can't read the Hebrew warnings on the bottle cleaned their toilet with
ammonia and clorox and they had to evacuate the whole neighborhood.

They don't believe in Darwin there either?

Now the most exotic toilet cleaner you can buy is something called
"hot water" (may cham) which is a mild dilution of hydrochloric acid. So mild,
I don't think it will cause skin burns.

Likely a good cleaner, though.

 

[krw]

NTI is WICKED stuff ! We used to make it by mixing a very strong household
cleaner called Handy Andy with pure iodine crystals 'borrowed' from the
biology department. For some reason, the ones there were a lot more pure
than any iodine crystals or liquid derivatives available for theft in the
chemistry department ...

Hmm, mine was biological grade too, though only because I had no
access to "chemicals" in high school. ;-) I used a 28% solution of
ammonia water I bought by the gallon in a local drug store. About ten
years ago my mother's best friend married a retired pharmacist (can't
get away with anything, forever). He remembered me and once when we
were visiting, my mother asked "what in the world" I did with all that
ammonia water. My mother was ~85 at that time. ;-)

Once it had been made, and passed through a filter
paper, we used to put it into corked boiling tubes (bigger than half inch
test tubes), and carry it around the school with us in our inside pockets. A
good splat of the stuff on the floor in the corridor, would just about dry
in a lesson period, to the point where it was unstable. At the end of the
lesson, let the teacher leave the class first ... Oh the bang, and that
luvverly cloud of purple smoke rising to the ceiling, and the crackles
underfoot for days afterward when walking down that corridor. The fun of
laughing at the caretaker and his assistant trying to remove the purple
stain blasted into the surface of the tiles ... Then there was the joy of
making delayed fuses for tuppeny bangers by soaking string in .... potassium
nitrate .... was it ? Tape a couple of inches to the top of a banger, then
set light to it and leave it under a seat at the back of the cinema at the
midnight movie. Plenty of time to return to your own seat before it went
off.

NTI is soluble in alcohol and perfectly stable as long as it's "wet".
An artist's paint brush and a classroom lock can generate loads of
fun. My senior year, I also had a master key to the interior locks in
the high school. That was fun too.

Oh happy happy days. What joyous things we learnt in 'real' schools all
those years ago !

Yeah. Kids today...

Thanks for reminding me of my mis-spent youth. )

You forgot?

 

[Nobody]

Now the most exotic toilet cleaner you can buy is something called
"hot water" (may cham) which is a mild dilution of hydrochloric acid.

That's called "Spirit of Salts" in the UK.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Now the most exotic toilet cleaner you can buy is something called

That's called "Spirit of Salts" in the UK.

There's something wrong with hydrochloric acid? I use SnoBol, which -- uh --
"cuts the crap" far better than detergent-only cleaners.

 

[Jupiter Jaq]

Nice! But a 1978 Montrachet or a nice bottle of Chateau d'Yquem would
also do

A couple bottles of Chimay Gold, properly handled and stored would
suffice just fine.

OK maybe a case.

 

[FatBytestard]

Since
we print around 5 times a week, the standby current matters more than the
max draw, but I would not want to plug it into a UPS.

Geoff.

If all you print is 5 times a week, and idle current matters that much,
burning a few calories by forcing anyone wanting to do a print job to
walk over and turn on the printer's main switch (zero idle current) and
wait a few minutes for the printer to boot up to its ready point would be
the right way to go.

Then again, it matters not what printer you buy, and you can plug it in
directly since you do not need "protection" for a device you only use 5
times a week, which has no need to be plugged into a UPS to begin with.
Any normal power strip would protect it, and many have RJ45 network
isolation ports as well. If you are using the USB interface, it IS 100%
plug and play and would not need to be plugged in until runtime either.

 

[FatBytestard]

My clamp-on amps guesser has a peak hold function. I'll try it out on
some of my LaserJet printers in the office and see what it shows.

Wont you have to open up the IEC power cord and clamp only a single
path?

I also notice that many of these are powered with standard 10A IEC line
cords. How can that be right for a device with such high usage
declarations?

 

[Jupiter Jaq]

Inkjet printers use very low power stepper motors to move the head and paper,
and very tiny heaters to make the ink bubble up. They run off of low power DC.
The power supply in the printer (or external on most of my inkjets) very happily
converts the output of a UPS to the DC that it needs.

The difference with laser printers is that the toner only sticks to the paper
as long as there is an electrical charge. To keep it falling off of the paper
after a few minutes, it has to be melted onto the paper.

The technical term used is "fused" and the part of the printer is called
a "fuser". They could of as easily called it "ironing" and an "iron", (as in
an iron-on T shirt pattern) but that would have been too simple and
not sound important enough.

Geoff.

Thermal Embedding... wait!

Vulcanization...

Makes the print job live long and prosper, as opposed to...

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/5d00f18600/kootees-in-star-trek-the-reverse-vulcan-greeting

 

[FatBytestard]

Epson inkjets do not use heat at all, but piezo elements to push the ink out.
Better, allows more more types if ink, and is faster, and allows for better control
of the droplets.
Yes I have couple of Epsons
But their service sucks as it is non-existing.

The problem with Epsons used to be that the print head stayed on the
printer, where HP replaces them with each cartridge.

That may have changed now though, since I haven't bought a printer in
years, and have seen several would be huge advances in detail and color
range capability. I don't know how they spray these days though, or who
the big print engine maker is, or if they all make their own now or what.

Used to be Canon. Seems like there are a lot of different "engines"
out there now though. Tektronix and Xerox still use solid ink methods.
I though most ink jet setups were piezo though by now, since it has such
precise fractional portioning ability.

 

[Jupiter Jaq]

Well, not really, but it's all been a very long time ago now. You leave
school, go to college, grow up a bit, get married, raise kids, and become a
responsible citizen :-( Then you start to get old, and become a grump,
remembering what a good bloke you were back in the day. Guess I'm close to
slipping into that phase now. Grown up kids look at me like I'm mad when
they see me with an iPod stuck in my lugholes, listening to the likes of
Uriah Heep and Dr John ...

Arfa

Did they bring you a blunt yet?

 

[Jupiter Jaq]

Isn't pure Iodine highly unstable?

Only in the hands of the highly unstable.

 

[Joerg]

A couple bottles of Chimay Gold, properly handled and stored would
suffice just fine.

OK maybe a case.

Yes!

Even though the bottle of Dos Equis I had while doing the tear-down
maintenance on our DE filter yesterday night just hit the spot

 

[Rich Grise]

.

stain blasted into the surface of the tiles ... Then there was the joy
of making delayed fuses for tuppeny bangers by soaking string in ....
potassium nitrate .... was it ? Tape a couple of inches to the top of a
banger, then set light to it and leave it under a seat at the back of
the cinema at the midnight movie. Plenty of time to return to your own
seat before it went off.

We used to use a book of matches and a lit cigarette. >:->

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise, Plainclothes Hippie]

On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:49:53 +0100, "Arfa Daily"


You forgot?

If you remember the '60's, you probably weren't participating. >:->

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

burning a few calories by forcing anyone wanting to do a print job to
walk over and turn on the printer's main switch (zero idle current) and
wait a few minutes for the printer to boot up to its ready point would be
the right way to go.

In this case the printer is next to the server, the computers are spread over
two floors and several rooms. And to top it off, I'm partially disabled, so
just getting up and walking over the printer, even if I were next to it,
is difficult.

Oh and BTW, the power switch is behind the printer, which would have to
be pulled out from the shelf it is on with one hand while the other reaches
behind it feeling around. For most of us, this would require an extra person,
sort of like the LED watch from Saturday Night Live that required you to push
3 buttons.

Geoff.

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Vulcanization...

Doesn't that require sulfur, or is that just rubber?

Geoff.

 

[FatBytestard]

In this case the printer is next to the server, the computers are spread over
two floors and several rooms. And to top it off, I'm partially disabled, so
just getting up and walking over the printer, even if I were next to it,
is difficult.

Oh and BTW, the power switch is behind the printer, which would have to
be pulled out from the shelf it is on with one hand while the other reaches
behind it feeling around. For most of us, this would require an extra person,
sort of like the LED watch from Saturday Night Live that required you to push
3 buttons.

Geoff.

The main power switch on the printer itself makes its off current zero.
You can build a small bluetooth device that fires a solenoid and a rod to
turn it on via network call if you want, and have someone else turn it
off for you. That could be lower consumption.

 

[Jupiter Jaq]

Doesn't that require sulfur, or is that just rubber?

Geoff.

It was a Star Trek joke, actually.

No, it was actually used as a term to define the polymerization (the
actual term) of any polymer based media for many years.

Now, we know the term is 'polymerization' (with the exception of the
original definition for the term), so nobody knows much more about the
term 'vulcanization' beyond its original use, which most certainly was
for rubber, and required Sulfur.

So, it was loosely used to refer to the 'hardening' of just about
anything 'wet'. Not correctly, and not in large circles, but it was
used.

"Fixing" was a term that was already in place, and related to
paintings... works of art. That would have been the term until someone
cited the fact that at the microscopic level the pigment particles were
actually 'fusing' to the paper fibers.

Otherwise, everyone would call it a 'fixer' and the process would be
'fixing'.