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CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

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Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#221

Post by culi »

bombcar wrote: post #3

I would like to see cartridges designed ecologically - refillable perhaps, or at least designed to flow as much out as possible - and allowing you to override the "toner low" warning and keep printing even if it's almost dry.

This is the opposite of how their designed. The chips on cartridges exist solely to make sure you're only buying proprietary cartridges and they cost about 20x the prices of the rest of the materials. The ink is dirt cheap and Costco actually had a service where they'd refill them for you (not sure if they still do since they got sued by some of these companies not too long ago). The plastic might even be more expensive than the ink

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#222

Post by neilv »

chaostheory wrote: post #150
dexzod wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is outrageous. Only a small percentage of owners know this kind of tricks. Imagine the environmental damage created by thousands of users throwing away perfectly usable cartridges. I always feel bad about throwing away laser printer cartridges, they have so many components that are working just fine, there should be a way to just refill the toner and reuse it.

If you think Samsung is bad, HP is much worse. Stay away from HP printers including laser

Is this recent from LaserJets, or involves HP software off-printer?

My HP LaserJet Pro 400 series m401n will keep printing even as the print quality fades, presumably due to actually low toner.

(This is running with CUPS and open source PCL drivers on the client, talking TCP to network passthrough to printer's USB, no HP-written software used off-printer.)

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#223

Post by techdragon »

aidenn0 wrote: post #202
briga wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that’s bad, consider that some printers are literally cheaper to buy than the ink replacements. Since new printers come with cartridges it can be cheaper to just buy a whole new printer whenever you run out of ink

Beware that some printers come with cartridges that are the same size as refills but contain less ink/toner (or are at least programmed to tell the printer they have less)

I think the entire situation is best summarised as ... "Beware of printers"

They basically all (but I will leave room for the possibility of a non-evil printer vendor) suck in a myriad of different ways from poor quality, to all the various dark/anti-patterns in both the original sale and the subsequent consumable sales.

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#224

Post by SECProto »

l8rlump wrote: post #215
SECProto wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to look into cleaning and lubricating your rollers. Paper creates a lot of dust that could be causing the issue.

Clean, but don't lubricate. They need to grip the paper :)

Haha, yes, I should have made that more clear - I only meant lubricate if there are any bearings or rolling surfaces, definitely not on the parts that are meant to grip! I had an old printer where one end of the steel roller was in a simple plastic bearing and it was squeaking, a drop of oil fixed it. But I'm not an expert, maybe that wasn't a great idea.

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#225

Post by rtkwe »

dlmiller wrote: post #23

That's not necessarily toner left in the cartridge. It could be developer. Laser printers have 2 separate forms of powder inside of them. One being toner, and the other being developer. The developer has fine metal particulates inside that "charge" the toner, enabling the toner to be pulled off of the drum, and onto the page. Larger copiers have the Developer, and toner separate. However, the cartridge pictured is th…

Also it's not flat across the top so it's probably more like 10-12% than 15%. They measured the highest edge when there's a pretty significant slope compared to the full toner cartridge.

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#226

Post by hammock »

nebula8804 wrote: post #129
tailspin2019 wrote: post #75

Somewhat related, I recently bought a Brita water filter jug which has a little led on the lid which glows red when the disposable filter cartridge has “expired” and needs replacing. Before I even started to use the thing I knew what to expect. Sure enough it starts to glow red after a ridiculously short period of time of using a brand new filter cartridge. I’ve been ignoring it for a few weeks now and checking for a…

So Brita filters are just activated Carbon that improve the taste and filter some of the worst pollutants but nothing else. One way to test is using a TDS meter to see if over time the amount of dissolved solids increase. This is not a bulletproof test but it may give some indication of when the filter is saturated. Again, the Brite/PUR filters do not do much to begin with. This video shows how the Brita filters perf…

I recommend Zerowater which have a 5 stage filter that includes ion exchange.

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#227

Post by jiveturkey »

jdsully wrote: post #4

Unlike ink jets most laser printers will let you disable the low toner “lock outs” although by default it may refuse to print. Then you just wait for the streaks to appear to know when you’re out. You can shake it to extend the life once that occurs. I’ve printed hundreds of pages after the printer said I was out of toner. There’s probably some small quality loss but for text you don’t really notice if it’s not strea…

My laser doesn't _refuse_ to print, it makes you click through a warning on the printer itself for each print job. Like you said, that can be easily disabled (it's a menu item -- no secret procedure). I've found the toners to easily print double the nominal capacity.

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#228

Post by hcrisp »

onemoresoop wrote: post #161
chaostheory wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think Samsung is bad, HP is much worse. Stay away from HP printers including laser

Is Brother any better? So far happy with my Laser Brother, way happier than the nightmares I've had with inkjet printers. But I have to admit we changed the tonner after less than 2000 pages. I assumed the cartrige had small capacity and didn't arise my suspicions. Should I worry?

I had a Brother inkjet printer that would give low ink warnings when the cartridges obviously had more left. I found if you used a black marker to mark the translucent side of the cartridge it would stop complaining and let you print hundreds more pages. It also wasted tons of ink on frequent "head cleaning". One day it finally stopped printing one of the colors despite no mechanical problems. So I got a Canon and have been happy ever since.

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#229

Post by analog31 »

Syonyk wrote: post #167
onemoresoop wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Brother any better? So far happy with my Laser Brother, way happier than the nightmares I've had with inkjet printers. But I have to admit we changed the tonner after less than 2000 pages. I assumed the cartrige had small capacity and didn't arise my suspicions. Should I worry?

No. They just run X pages and assume the cartridge is empty. You can reset it with some faintly annoying incantations, and I'd suggest doing so until you notice actual print quality issues. Especially on black. The logic is... reasonably sound from a print quality perspective. "We know the cartridge can print XXXX pages of reasonable coverage without any fading/dropouts/etc. If the user replaces it at that point, the…

The incantations are printed out and taped to the side of my Brother printer. I can live with light prints for a while. Until I got a recent tablet device, a lot of my prints were sheet music that was used once.

Re: CT scan shows there's still lots of toner left in an “empty” cartridge

#230

Post by MertsA »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #143
ck45 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an older Brother HL-2035. It can be convinced to keep on printing by covering two holes on the cartridge with some duct tape.

That's nuts. What's the rationale for that, aside from possibly selling more cartridges? So wasteful!

Those two holes are transparent windows across the toner cartridge. It's a level sensor.
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