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StyleWriterII Paper Feed Fix

Snial

68000
Hi folks,

I met up with a friend whom I haven't seen in decades, at the Everything Electric Show* in Farnborough and he gave me a number of StyleWriters in various states of disrepair! There's a 2x SWIIs, an SW1200 and a Color SW2400. One of the SWIIs (a yellowing one) doesn't seem to power up (no LEDs), but the other SWII and SW1200 do. Unfortunately they won't normally feed paper through, so it's impossible to do even a test image!

I found I could coerce the paper into the feed at which point it tried to do a test image, using an old, dry Apple ink cartridge. So, that was encouraging. I read that the rollers could wear out and I had seen some 'O' ring type things that had gone brittle and broken; so I took it apart and tried to fix it using some small rubber bands. Lo-and-behold, it could then feed paper through and when I swapped in a 35 year old Canon BC-02 (serial 9300E15, so maybe 1993?) it actually did do a test image print! How cool is that??!?!?

StyleWriterIITestImage.jpg
The next thing is to reassemble the little critter and see if the same trick will work with the SW1200!
StyleWriterIIFix.jpg
I'm using the Repair Manual to do this, so there's less chance I'll snap some plastic lugs. I love the design though, basically it entirely clips together!


If it all works I'll hook it up to my PB1400 (or LC II). Originally I did have an SWII that I bought with my LCII (actually a P400) and thought it was great, mostly because it was simple, small and minimalist with crisp output.

* https://uk.everythingelectric.show/south
 
My first printer was a StyleWriter II. I still vividly remember the sound it made doing the test print (which as I recall they used as the sound effect of a fax machine in Lost In Translation)
 
My second printer was a StyleWriter II (my first being an ImageWriter II). I remember getting frustrated with the rollers; they wore down and lost their grip in an annoyingly short amount of time. I seem to recall replacing them with some hand-carved rubber at one point. But other than that, they still stand up to me as one of Canon's best maintainable inkjet printer designs.
 
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