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The access/overhaul/teardown procedures that you'll find here all follow the same format -- each procedure is simply a numbered list of items to be dealt with (removed, usually) in order. Following each item's name is point-form information detailing what's involved. There are no illustrations.

In my experience, the manufacturers' illustrated procedures in their service manuals are all uniformly appalling. The illustrations are largely unhelpful. If anything, they tend to make things appear to be much more complicated than they really are. Consider, do you need to be shown a photograph of a printer's right side cover in order to be able to recognize its right side cover? Surely not. When a procedure is loaded with needless photographs, the effect is to make the job look intimidating, when it's actually nothing more than dealing with a few fasteners in the proper sequence.

Following are the conventions and abbreviations used in the procedures:

• A/F = across flats. Usually this refers to the size of a hex nut.
• aka = also known as
• A/R = as required.
• 'left' and 'right' always refer to a user's left and right as he or she faces the front of the machine.
• PCA = Printed Circuit Assembly
• POST = Power-On Self Test
• PTO = Power Take-Off
• 'screw' means machine screw. [Note 1]
• 'threading screw' means a coarse-threaded thread-forming screw used in plastic. [Note 1]
• w/ = with
• w/o = without
• YZD = yellow zinc dichromate, a yellow-coloured plating used on many fasteners.

Note 1: I almost always provide details of each fastener's size and type, as an aid to fastener identification and to correct reassembly. Those details won't always agree with what you encounter on any given machine. Manufacturers occasionally make changes in the course of a production run, or previous work done on a machine may have introduced changes.

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