Printer Rod Material

[deltaenterprizes]

I had read a post about retrieving thr steel rods from inside junk printers and when my printer died I removed them. They are magnetic and have a nice shiney finish and machine beautifully!
Any ideas what alloy this might be?

[ammcoman2]

I have a stash from a 70's era Xerox office machine. Agree about the machining aspect.

As near as I can ascertain, after asking more knowledgeable folks than me, the metal could be SAE 416 stainless.

Geoff

[ww_kayak]

And better yet, what to use them for? I too have a stash of them that just seemed to nice to throw out

[danlb]

I've been collecting the rods along with the linear bearings that come with them. Eventually I'll make a nice little jig for a sliding head of some sort. Possibly a nice pantograph type tracing engraver.


Dan

[Nick1911]

I have used these as well.

I can tell you that they will rust! I was quite surprised to find this out.

[Your Old Dog]

I think Evan said they are dead flat and make good sraight rods for testing your lathe bed and such. That's what I use the one I have for and it works well. Keep it with my measuring tools. It rolls perfect on my surface plate.

[GadgetBuilder]

From the way these rods machine, my guess is they're similar to 1144 stressproof. The price is right so I use them for lots of things.

John

[lakeside53]

I've been collecting shalfts from printers and copiers for years... yes,., great stuff.. The USA printers have ground Imperial shafts and the imports (Japanese) metric. Nice to get a ground metric shafts measuring 12.00mm and imperial 0.06250 without paying for them!


My guess is most of what I have is a 400 series stainless...

[3t-]

I also have kept a few of these rods as they seem to be nice quality and should be good for something...someday

related: not trying to Hijack here, if anyone has a use for any of the printer carcass shown below I could put it in a mailing box and send it USPS to the lower 48 only. It is from a OkiData Okipage or something like that. The electronics were good when I stopped using it, the toner was just leaking.

PM me.

[Evan]

They machine like leaded steel which is probably what they are. They need to be quickly and easily machinable to a very good finish in production. Leaded steel is exempt from ROHS as long as it doesn't contain more than 3% lead, which it doesn't.