I just took home a couple of network printers from work and slaughtered them in my living room. What I'm left with figuring out is a way to control one of the motors. I don't have a picture of the motor, but the connector reads:
Well first thing you need to know is you don't want to have the motor directly connected to the arduino. You will want to connect it threw an H-bridge. Otherwise the motor could damage the arduino. personally i use a motor shield to run motors. Makes things a bit easier.
Printers can have both DC motors (2 wires) and stepper motors (usually 4, 5 or 6 wires).
Read the playground for info on how to control both types. As Digimike says, none of the can be connected directly to Arduino pins because they draw more than the 40mA of current an Arduino pin can source.
Hmmm... I think (therfore Im not) that arduinos should come with H-bridge and 2-3 transistors in the package, should be slotted on the board with a header row on each side, so when needed, just a jumper cable away.
Yes but then you pay for it every time whether you need it or not.
Yeah, but it's hard to think of a project that doesn't use transistors = H-bridge
bulk price of an H-bridge is cheap
(sorry I am lousy with money, byproduct of living in norway)
(Everything with a $ under 100, seems to me to be a sale)
Printer demolishing
Do not waste anything, even dc motors in printers can be used like steppers, there is usually rotary encoder near/on them, can be used with PID control, gears are useful too. Old fashioned needle printer feeders are great to make SMD tape feeder (pins through holes feeding)
Yippie my 2^8 post
TIME TO CELEBRATE :o Davids memory will go to zero at next posting
**Only place for 8 bits here **
It comes in a kit you have to put together yourself so i went ahead and got a set of pass through headers so it could stay attached to my arduino all the time and i still had access to all the pins. Then i can use the 2 H-bridges as needed. But they are connected to the arduino through a shift register.
That gives me an idea for a shield. One shield that offers a shift register, H-bridge and multiplexer. Maybe some other options that are all jumper selectable. A little beyond my knowledge at the moment but something to think about.