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HOWTO: The Anti-Printer
Compu486 writes "Inventgeek.com has an interesting article on modding laser printers. In this how to mod they have converted a standard Xerox laser printer into an automatic high volume paper shredder. Just what we need to take care of those pesky alien autopsy photos, TPS reports, and Apple & IBM's CPU Contracts."
Big deal...at my office there's a printer that randomly shreds documents without any sort of modification. ^_^
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
A laser printer seems like a much more useful tool than a paper shredder. That is considering that they have shredders at my local office store for next to nothing.
:-)
Hacks are wonderful things... but this is like turning a 911 into a Chevette.
Ignore Alien Orders
...modding a fax machine or photocopier like this :)
I would like a modded HP toner+drum cartridge that randomly shreds documents. Then I could cause much hilarity in the office as the presentation-making, paper-shifting, twoddle-spouting marketing types try to print off their presentations 5 minutes before their meetings.
And paper jam feature (V3 laser printers). And when they said paper jammed, they really meant it. I also loved the paper folding feature where the paper was folded in a width 0.5inch harmonica.
They really miss these good old features on this Xerox. Too bad, else it would have been worth to spend some time on it.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I thought not.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Just what we need to take care of those pesky alien autopsy photos
I believe that the submitter was referring to this Xerox "real customer testimonials" advertisement.
Do you like German cars?
I'm waiting for the duplex version of this mod, so I can print then shred my documents in one go, Futerama bureaucrat style.
How come I was expecting the article to be about installing Linux on the printer?
Now instead of deleting pdf documents I can just print them to the shredder.
The sad thing is, if I say that out loud here, it would probably become office policy.
Speaking of shredders, I remember seeing a handheld, wand-shaped, shredder for sale once. My first thought was that this was a dumb idea. Then, I realized that they would be perfect for those goobers that are constantly shoving flyers at you when you walk into a shopping mall or down city streets. I can just see how the interaction would go:
[goober] Would you like a flyer explaining our cause to fight discrimination against people with excessive ear hair? It's also good for 10% off a facial a Chez Whositz.
[me] Sure, thanks! {immediately runs it through handy shredder}
[goober] you're an asshole, you know that?
[me] {chuckling to myself}...yea....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Bah, it would be cool if they used the laser to shred the papers into tiny little confetti. Then we could begin the whole "printers with lasers on their heads" comment storm!
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Dearest Mods: No, this is not a troll, just a potentially lame attempt at humor. This is a troll.
"This motor is actually scavenged from an additional paper shredder"
Sooo, take one functioning printer, one functioning shredder, combine the two and what do you have; one functioning shredder that looks like a printer and a pile of spare parts
I love mods for mods sake
...since a cross-cut unit isn't that much more than a strip unit. The guy says he doesn't need cross cut... well, perhaps.
But consider this; assume the shredder takes a vertically-aligned piece of A4/US-Letter paper. That's not too bad if you've printed the document in the same orientation.
On the other hand, if you've printed the document as 'landscape' (or simply fed it in that way), the text is rotated by 90 degrees, and it's quite possible to get a COMPLETE LINE OF TEXT LEFT INTACT. Sure, it might get cut in half. Or it *might not*... and this is a near-certainty if you have one of those cheap shredders that only does really wide strips (7-8mm). Not to mention that the latter, assuming the documents in the bin haven't become too mixed, will be relatively easy to reconstruct because there are so few pieces.
In addition, feeding the paper 'correctly' (as a printer mechanism would) improves the alignment and hence *increases the problem*!
I bought a cross-cut shredder which reduces to fairly small pieces (4 x 22mm). Although it might be possible to have some meaningful information remain intact (e.g. a short account number), this is far less probable. Even if this happens, as it's not part of a long run of text, the context and meaning will be separated (e.g. the account number might not be recognised as such), and unless someone *really* knows what they're looking for, they'll probably miss it.
Plus, they have *many* more pieces to search through, and they're easier to mix up if you're really paranoid.
Yeah, the FBI could still get your information if they got their hands on the shredded paper (I bet they have pretty advanced 'stitching' software and the money to pay people to scan the pieces properly), but there's little information I have that the FBI couldn't find far easier in another manner. It'll stop everyone else, and that's good enough for what I use it for.
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A young executive is leaving the office late one night when he finds the CEO standing over the shredder with a piece of paper in his hand.
"This is a very sensitive official document," says the CEO. "My secretary's gone for the night. Can you make this thing work?"
"Sure," says the junior exec as he turns on the shredder and hits the start button.
"Great," says the CEO. "I just need one copy."
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2B1ASK1
im sure i remeber hearing about a system where you scan in all the shreds of paper and software reassembles the edges to recreate the documents. now quite apart from the fact that a paper shreder can be bought for pennys, wouldnt it be far more use to have the printer just to print a huge black box or just go up to the roof with a trash can and matches.
"PC Load Letter"? What the fuck does that mean?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Reminds me of the time we got the high speed paper shredder and put it in the copy room next to the high speed band printer. The other tech and I looked at each, grinned, and promptly fed the output from the continous feed printer into the input of the shredder. It was a close race, but the shredder won, proving conclusively that it is easier to destroy than create.
If you bothered READING the first page of the site, this was actually the source of the Tom's Hardware "guide"...
"This project was featured on 8/3/05 on toms hardware's "how to" section."
We have printers on our network with the following names:
shredder
pc_load_a4
toner_low
paper_jam
warming_up
fax_machine
The helpdesk tickets are rather amusing.