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Printer maintenance
Dec. 14th, 2009 06:12 pmLast night the color laser printer decided that all of the colors were empty, all at once, so it was time to try out the refill kit I bought off a Chinese vendor on eBay.
It was the most trivial refill I've ever done. Pop off the refill cap on one end of the cart, shake out the old toner (it looked to me like 1/3 of it was still there), put in the right amount of toner (half of what I got, more on that later), recap, then unscrew the cover over the gear train on the other end, move a gear, put the cover back on, done. About 8 minutes once I figured everything out.
The official Brother color carts cost about $67 for the half-full ones, $140 for the full ones. Generic ones are $65 for the full ones, so it would have been $200 for a full set of 3 colors. The refill kit was $100 for toner equivalent to one full set (two refills on my half cartridges) thus the need to put in only half the toner I had.
The carts I refilled were the ones that came with the printer, which are the infamous half-full cartridges. They're supposed to be good for 1500 pages. According to the printer stats, we actually printed 1858 color pages, 2675 pages total. Yes, this is a consumer-level printer, the carts don't have that much toner in them.
BTW, the gear that needs moving is a reset gear. The thing has a flag sticking up that hits a switch inside the printerexactly once in its life, the first time it's started up. There are only teeth on the gear about 3/4 of the way around, so it goes around this far, runs out of teeth, and a spring holds it in place after that. It hitting the switch tells the printer that you just put in a new toner cartridge, so by moving the gear the printer resets everything for that color.
Next time I think I may try turning the reset gear without touching the toner, since it appeared to me that there was still significant toner in there. Since the printer also has windows on either side that it can use to actually "see" if there is toner left, it seems a good idea to just reset it and let it keep printing as long as possible, instead of dumping out 1/3 of the toner as I did this time.
Looks like I'll get a chance soon; I printed 5 pages and it's blinking toner low on the black cart. It could be a few weeks before it gets cranky and says the toner is OUT.
It was the most trivial refill I've ever done. Pop off the refill cap on one end of the cart, shake out the old toner (it looked to me like 1/3 of it was still there), put in the right amount of toner (half of what I got, more on that later), recap, then unscrew the cover over the gear train on the other end, move a gear, put the cover back on, done. About 8 minutes once I figured everything out.
The official Brother color carts cost about $67 for the half-full ones, $140 for the full ones. Generic ones are $65 for the full ones, so it would have been $200 for a full set of 3 colors. The refill kit was $100 for toner equivalent to one full set (two refills on my half cartridges) thus the need to put in only half the toner I had.
The carts I refilled were the ones that came with the printer, which are the infamous half-full cartridges. They're supposed to be good for 1500 pages. According to the printer stats, we actually printed 1858 color pages, 2675 pages total. Yes, this is a consumer-level printer, the carts don't have that much toner in them.
BTW, the gear that needs moving is a reset gear. The thing has a flag sticking up that hits a switch inside the printerexactly once in its life, the first time it's started up. There are only teeth on the gear about 3/4 of the way around, so it goes around this far, runs out of teeth, and a spring holds it in place after that. It hitting the switch tells the printer that you just put in a new toner cartridge, so by moving the gear the printer resets everything for that color.
Next time I think I may try turning the reset gear without touching the toner, since it appeared to me that there was still significant toner in there. Since the printer also has windows on either side that it can use to actually "see" if there is toner left, it seems a good idea to just reset it and let it keep printing as long as possible, instead of dumping out 1/3 of the toner as I did this time.
Looks like I'll get a chance soon; I printed 5 pages and it's blinking toner low on the black cart. It could be a few weeks before it gets cranky and says the toner is OUT.
