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Modern laser printer toner refill kits

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mbbrutman

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Does anybody have any experience refilling the toner on a laser printer cartridge?

In particular, I have a small collection of Brother cartridges (TN-650 and TN-660) here that I should recycle. But it looks like refilling them is not terribly difficult - get the plug out of the side, empty out the old toner, fill with new toner, install the plug and reset a gear/counter to indicate that the cartridge is full again. It seems easy enough, but I'm curious about print quality afterwards. (Is all black laser toner created equal?)


Mike
 
I've a Minolta CF3102 copier, that I've refilled with raw toner before and it's been fine. I don't think all black toner is the same thought. I've heard there is different particle size, and there's positive and negative (not sure if this is BS). Years ago I had a B/W Brother that used laser jet II cartridges. I refilled it with toner scavenged from broken printers. It didn't work well, but it was filthy anyway. I'd just go with a refill kit.
 
I've refilled the toner cartridge on the brother sitting on my desk at least twice. No problems at all. I've done the same with my wife's Brother printer.

The toner kit vendors advise using a vacuum cleaner the first time to avoid mixing of two types of toner--and I've done that.

Note that if you buy a Brother laser printer new, it usually comes with a "short fill" (filled only halfway) cartridge, so refilling will get you a lot more play time.

Now, if someone can advise me about filling cartridges for my Xerox N2825, I'd be grateful.
 
I hope your vacuum cleaner had a HEPA filter of you would have blasted toner particles all over the place.

I refilled an old NEC Superscript 870 many years ago and it was easy enough (pull the plug, fill, close it). The HP 4si I just purchased a new toner for it for $15 shipped, they are high capacity so not worth refilling the old ones that streaked anyway. The Pantum I currently have hooked up came with a starter toner I plan to refill when needed but I rarely print much anymore so who knows if I will get around to it or just buy a new printer. I can't remember if my Epson Actionlaser 1500 had been refilled or replaced but it did run out back when I used to print quite a bit.

I don't think there is a universal kit for lasers especially if you have older ones but ebay should have toner suppliers for pretty much all the popular brands cheap and there are kits to make a hole in the toner cart if it is sealed.
 
As a matter of fact, it was a little Hoover vac--about the size of a big lunchbox with its own washable filter. No problems at all.

Have you looked at the price of a remanufactured toner cartridge for the N2825? It costs as much as a Brother laser printer--if you get the Xerox-manufactured new on, it costs as much as four.

I think I still have a Panasonic 4455 laser somewhere--that requires that toner be poured into a hopper. Great printer for the time; built like a battleship, but messy as hell to refill.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Note that if you buy a Brother laser printer new, it usually comes with a "short fill" (filled only halfway) cartridge, so refilling will get you a lot more play time.
Click to expand...

I have an HL-5340D. Must have been a TN-620 3000 page toner that it came with originally. I have a TN-650 rated for 8000 pages in it now. The printer settings page says I replaced the toner at a page count of 3516. I'm only up to 4127 pages now. At the rate I go through pages and toner I'll just stick with OEM toner. If I remember right when I bought the TN-650 it came with a postage paid label to ship the old toner back for recycling so I just did that. I suppose it makes a lot of sense for them to pay for the shipping to get the used toner out of the hands of refillers.
 
I can say with certainty that there are at least two different types of toner. One type works with the PCB Fab in a Box process and the other doesn't.

Every HP I've used had toner that works. Every Brother I've tried had toner that didn't work. However I've been told that some Brothers do work.
 
Very interesting thread on toner refills. But I can't help wondering: why go through all the mess and fuss with a refill when you can get a replacement cartridge fairly cheap? I've got a Canon b/w MF240 laser and a pair of refills was less than $25, each good for about 2300 copies. That's a lot of printing. I suppose if you're doing professional work, then maybe it might payoff to get a large tub of toner and roll your own.
 
Agent Orange said:
Very interesting thread on toner refills. But I can't help wondering: why go through all the mess and fuss with a refill when you can get a replacement cartridge fairly cheap? I've got a Canon b/w MF240 laser and a pair of refills was less than $25, each good for about 2300 copies. That's a lot of printing. I suppose if you're doing professional work, then maybe it might payoff to get a large tub of toner and roll your own.
Click to expand...

I've been buying new cartridges directly from Brother, so quality is not a concern - those are always going to be perfect. And they'll take back the original cartridges with a prepaid mailer, so I really don't need to be accumulating them.

However, "refurb" cartridges on Amazon are damn cheap in comparison - 1/2 to 1/3rd the price. And it doesn't look like rocket science to refill a cartridge either. Hence the curiosity.
 
BTW, the reason the Xerox carts are so pricey is because of pulling the same trick that Lexmark uses--a non-reprogrammable chip in the cartridge that tells the printer that its time has expired. Fortunately, I see that I can pick up replacement chips on AliExpress for not a lot of money. Might be wise to grab a couple.

Note that the carts for the N2825 are 15K sheet cartridges, so it's long time between refills.
 
One caveat goes with all of this toner business and I almost forgot to mention: Some of the big time laser printer manufacturers, especially Canon, use a chip to ID their own refill products. Goes for color refills also. So, better check it out before you jump in with your order.
 
All's I knows is something's fishy with the HP Colour Laser I've been using for the past four years. I hardly ever use it. In that time I've put maybe two reams of paper in. I've had to change the toner cartridges three times.

I need to find a new colour laser printer for that and a whole list of other reasons.
 
Agent Orange said:
One caveat goes with all of this toner business and I almost forgot to mention: Some of the big time laser printer manufacturers, especially Canon, use a chip to ID their own refill products. Goes for color refills also. So, better check it out before you jump in with your order.
Click to expand...

See my post #10. You can get replacement chips from AliExpress for most of these. Still far less than the cost of a new cartridge.
 
Chuck(G) said:
See my post #10. You can get replacement chips from AliExpress for most of these. Still far less than the cost of a new cartridge.
Click to expand...

A while back, when I still was insisting on printing color photos on my Canon Pixma printer, I opted for 3rd party 'certified' replacement color cartridges, which turned out to be a disaster. So, I started taking my business to Walmart and that went okay for a while, until some lady decided that she was going to 'inspect' my finished photos for 'copyright' infringements. I now use Costco and have never had a problem of any sort. I'm a little leery of some of Alibaba's stuff, but if you've had personal experience with their cartridges they must be okay.
 
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Note that Alibaba sells not carts, but just the chip kits.

You'd think there would be an easy firmware hack around this, but I've never encountered one.
 
KC9UDX said:
All's I knows is something's fishy with the HP Colour Laser I've been using for the past four years. I hardly ever use it. In that time I've put maybe two reams of paper in. I've had to change the toner cartridges three times.

I need to find a new colour laser printer for that and a whole list of other reasons.
Click to expand...

When you said you replaced the toner cartridges 3 times in four years, how many were different colors, and how many were the same color that had to be replaced more than once.
Also, were you buying re-manufactured cartridges or genuine HP cartridges?

Hp decided years ago to manufacture their toner cartridges with the drum inside each toner cartridge. Their reason was that the drum had a life span roughly equivalent to the time it took to use all of the toner in a cartridge. For most people, that works out OK.
If you don't print that much, then you will have problems with streaking from the drum going bad before running out of toner.
I have had 3 HP Color Laserjet printers in past 16-18 years and they have all worked really well.
If you get a used one about 3 years old, you can find new-OEM surplus toner cartridges for a fraction of the cost of the ones at major office supply stores. I bought a HP 3800DN off of eBay in 2011 and it still works good. Replaced all toner cartridges over a 7 year period, but that price was cheap compared to the equivalent cost of Inkjet cartridges

Last month I got my first new HP Color Laserjet. $200 off the retail price of $650. It's a All-in-one scanner and printer with duplexer on both the scanner and printer. Scanner has an optical resolution of 1200 dpi.
 
Chuckster_in_Jax said:
When you said you replaced the toner cartridges 3 times in four years, how many were different colors, and how many were the same color that had to be replaced more than once.
Also, were you buying re-manufactured cartridges or genuine HP cartridges?

Hp decided years ago to manufacture their toner cartridges with the drum inside each toner cartridge. Their reason was that the drum had a life span roughly equivalent to the time it took to use all of the toner in a cartridge. For most people, that works out OK.
If you don't print that much, then you will have problems with streaking from the drum going bad before running out of toner.
I have had 3 HP Color Laserjet printers in past 16-18 years and they have all worked really well.
If you get a used one about 3 years old, you can find new-OEM surplus toner cartridges for a fraction of the cost of the ones at major office supply stores. I bought a HP 3800DN off of eBay in 2011 and it still works good. Replaced all toner cartridges over a 7 year period, but that price was cheap compared to the equivalent cost of Inkjet cartridges

Last month I got my first new HP Color Laserjet. $200 off the retail price of $650. It's a All-in-one scanner and printer with duplexer on both the scanner and printer. Scanner has an optical resolution of 1200 dpi.
Click to expand...

Question: Have you tried printing a color photo on photo stock?
 
Agent Orange said:
Question: Have you tried printing a color photo on photo stock?
Click to expand...

No. Some demo pages built into the color laserjet printers look really good. But try a printing a standard photo that looks good on a monitor, and they never seem to look as good as the printed demos.
BTW, I've never seen a Color Laserjet with anything but 600 dpi resolution.

But even color photos I have seen printed with Inkjets have really odd unnatural colors.
 
I replaced all three colours every time. They were all depleted. Yellow goes first.
 
Chuckster_in_Jax said:
No. Some demo pages built into the color laserjet printers look really good. But try a printing a standard photo that looks good on a monitor, and they never seem to look as good as the printed demos.
BTW, I've never seen a Color Laserjet with anything but 600 dpi resolution.

But even color photos I have seen printed with Inkjets have really odd unnatural colors.
Click to expand...

That Canon Pixma I used to have did a real good on photos. It even had a templet/grid for slides. The thing had 7 colors including 2 for black, but was just too darned expensive to operate. I was kind of hoping that there would be a somewhat economical breakthrough in color photo processing on a color laser printer.
 
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