Refilling Toner Cartridges

[tskipbarry]

Hi all,

I run a small business out of my house and have a few HP color laser printers at home that I use for printing.  Official replacement cartridges can cost over $300 for all four colors.

I have been collecting used cartridges for a few years and found that they are readily refilled which takes around 15 minutes a cartridge using third party toner refill ink.

I currently have had success with Toner Eagle Brand inks, but I'm sure that others probably work just as well. 

I follow the written and well documented instructions and have found that there are a few secrets:

I use rubbing alcohol to clean the ink from around hole created to pour the ink into the cartridge and I have a can of compressed air that I use to remove any ink remaining on the cartridge after the ink refill process has been completed.

All in all, I've already saved over $1,000 in replacement cartridges, this year alone and am very satisfied with the print quality.

Todd

[impaire]

I would never have thought of that! I don't spend the same amount you do on ink every year, but every little bit helps, right? Thanks for the tip!

[aarmfield]

I would like to make a few remarks about the refilling ink market.

I work at HP in a very large R&D location for Imaging products (Printers, scanner, etc.).  HP has put in over $2mil in research to make sure their products work as well as they should.  Everything from a sound proof room (to make sure the sounds are not annoying, but you still know that the printer is working), to environment chambers where we can simulate conditions in any part of the world. (do you live in Saudi Arabia where there is a ton of sand?  We got you covered.  Vietnam's humid climate?  Good to go.)

One thing that HP hates (and you can take this with a grain of salt since their biggest price point is supplies) is when people re-fill the cartridges.  You see the devices are engineered to work with their paper.  They are engineered to work with their ink.  They are tested in different sorts of environments to make sure that the combination of ink (or toner), paper, and device all work optimally.

Now a little about ink cartridges:
There is a bag inside of the hard cartridge that you do not see.  In order for the ink to come out of the cartridge the bag is pressurized to cause the ink to come out of a VERY fine hole at the bottom.  When you re-fill the cartridge what you are doing is puncturing the bag (no matter where you put the hole) to get the ink in.  What this ends up doing is causing a weak spot in the bag when the bag is pressurized.

It may never happen to you for your entire life, or it may, but one day the pressure will be too much for that bag and it will explode all over the inside of your printer.  This ink will gum up the inner workings of the printer and you will be faced with a repair job that costs the same, if not more, than a new printer.

Again, if you have been doing this very thing and nothing like this has gone wrong, then you are one of the lucky ones, but beware it could happen at any time.

Also, tskipbarry, unless you are printing pictures, you might want to look into laserjet printers. They use toner which is a much faster process of printing, are much cheaper in the long run, and give you the same quality of documents.  If you are printing pictures, then I can understand the need for the ink as you will not find a better quality in toner.

Whether you heed my warning or not, I hope this information helps you make the best decision for you.  I am in no way trying to tell you to re-fill or not, just the engineering side of it.

[tskipbarry]

Thanks for the warning regarding ink cartridges. 

Although I may not have used the right nomenclature, I do use HP color laser jet printers and am actually using a toner refill (dry ink) to refill laserjet cartridges.  These do not have any inner bag to my knowledge.

I understand that HP ink products have been optimized for HP paper which I think is admirable, but I do not use their paper and my printing demands are not for professional use - e.g. I'm not printing professional images.

All in all, I have been very happy with the printing results thus far.  I suspect that sometime in the future, one of these cartridges may spring a leak and cause somewhat of a mess with the printer, I'm using.  But I'm willing to take those risks to save the amount of money that I 'm saving in printer cartridge replacements. Otherwise, I would be looking for other alternatives, such as replacing color printers with black and white printers.

Todd

[aarmfield]

Thanks for the warning regarding ink cartridges. 

Although I may not have used the right nomenclature, I do use HP color laser jet printers and am actually using a toner refill (dry ink) to refill laserjet cartridges.  These do not have any inner bag to my knowledge.

I understand that HP ink products have been optimized for HP paper which I think is admirable, but I do not use their paper and my printing demands are not for professional use - e.g. I'm not printing professional images.

All in all, I have been very happy with the printing results thus far.  I suspect that sometime in the future, one of these cartridges may spring a leak and cause somewhat of a mess with the printer, I'm using.  But I'm willing to take those risks to save the amount of money that I 'm saving in printer cartridge replacements. Otherwise, I would be looking for other alternatives, such as replacing color printers with black and white printers.

Todd

I understand now.  When I read ink, I think it is ink cartridges.  Toner on the other hand has no ink what so ever (not even dry ink).  It's a dry powder like substance that is very dangerous if not controlled correctly.  Re-filling the toner on a cartridge means the particles can get in the air and cause all kinds of health issues.  This is much worse than re-filling ink cartridges.  Spilled toner should **NEVER** be cleaned up with a regular household vacuum as the particles are so fine it can electrically charge the particles and they will start a fire.  Plus they are so fine they go right through bags and filters.

This is all beside the point that more and more refill companies have stated that refilling will end up costing more than just purchasing new cartridges (because of cost of breakdown of drum and fuser and other mechanical parts from reuse).

If you are saving a bunch of money, that is great, but I would not recommend doing this at any cost to your health.  I am not going to tell anybody what they can and cannot do, but I think it should be mentioned the health and safety risks involved with toner refill when you recommend doing this, to others:

The risks (health and mechanical) of refilling toner cartridges far out weight the savings of refilling toner.

[tskipbarry]

As a physician, I would like to thank you for pointing out that toner can be harmful if inhaled, leading to some safety risks when refilling toner cartridges.  Although toner powder is not thought to be toxic or carcinogenic at the present time, it does need to be handled with care, particularly due to the small particle size of the toner which may facilitate its introduction deep into alveolar spaces of the lung, if inhaled.

Gloves should be worn when handling toner as well as a protective dust mask to prevent inhalation. These precautions are specified in instructions of the manufacturer of toner refill products.

It is also important to point out that laser printers, including some HP printers, themselves have been implicated in indoor pollution and the emission of toner particles into the air.   Since only one article has been published to date regarding emission of toner particles in the setting of printing documents and is already several years old, it is difficult to understand the risk that this type of technology poses for the workplace.  I would imagine that keeping these laserprinters in areas that are well ventilated may provide a reasonable approach to this type of indoor particle emission.

Here is the reference for the emission of toner particles by laser printers:

Morawska, Lidia; co-authors: He, Congrong; Taplin, Len (2007-07-10). "Particle Emission Characteristics of Office Printers" (PDF). International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (Queensland University of Technology); Queensland Department of Public Works (SF Gate). pp. 1–7. Retrieved 2007-08-03.

The pdf can be accessed directly here:  http://www.genano.fi/pdf/americanchemicalsociety.pdf