HP Designjet 500/510 Formatter Board Inquiry

[zobot257]

Hello!

Slight big of background on me: I've recently become a technician for the USPS, and the one part of the job I'm still learning how to handle (Ok, there's a lot of those, but only one is pertinent here) is the large number of old plotter printers we have at our facilities that need to be repaired or have maintenance performed on them. I've asked a few questions around here about these devices before (You guys are the best! Thank you!) and now I have one relatively short, hopefully quick question.

One of the devices I've been assigned to work on at the moment is an HP Designjet 510 Plotter Printer that's giving us a "System Error 05:10" fuss. I did research online about this, and learned it's usually a Formatter or HPGL/2 card failure, or just an error with that part.

I investigated the printer in question, and found what I'm 99% sure is the problem: The printer I was asked to fix is missing the Formatter entirely! The slot's empty, right next to a filled network spot on the device. My best guess is in the past, some other technician pulled it to fix another device, but until I fill that slot I can't even begin to tell if this device is otherwise in working order or not.

Today, we recently got in two old HP Designjet 500 Plotter printers that we are going to scrap for parts, and then recycle once we've no longer got anything useful we can take from them. My question is this:

Can I use the formatter card from a Designjet 500 Printer in a Designjet 510 model? They're in the same series, but some quick google searches show they seem to have different part numbers.

- The Designjet 510 seems to have one numbered CH336-67001

- The Designjet 500 seems to have one numbered C7772A

Now I could very easily be wrong. I'm by no means an expert on either of these devices and the info I put above is just what I found after 20 minutes using Google to search for part info. So I want to know: Can I use the formatter board from the 500 in the 510, or is this a mistake?

[Repairatrooper]

This is the type of question where the answer is never known until someone tries it. It may or may not work but I doubt you would get anyone at HP to commit to answering. Likely a mismatch will occur as the older formatter would missing components to support the newer printer. Personally I would be tempted to try, but I take no responsibility for the results of my opinion.  Post back if you try and share your results.

[Valsimot]

According to HP C7772A is discontinued has been replaced with CH336-67001, but the only way to know is to try and give us the result.

[tabcom]

"Can I use the formatter board from the 500 in the 510, or is this a mistake?"

No.

They are physically different parts and are not interchangeable.

Also, the 510 model has three different part numbers. As is HPs practice, each part  number represents a different lot number.

They all are the same part.

Available at designjetpartsfast*com