I wonder how much toner is being wasted in cartridges due to printer manufacturers – special toner sensors. These have all sorts of names usually pretending to be protecting your print quality or even the printer itself. In reality it’s the usual rip off, manufacturers eager to improve their bottom line by getting you to buy more cartridges for your printer. I saw an awful example in the HP CM1015 Toner cartridge refill. The printer was complaining about that the toner cartridge was empty and refusing to print. This was the usual little sensor playing up and telling me something that was empty when it clearly wasn’t.

I mean most of us are lucky to be blessed with the gift of sight, we can see when the quality is getting worse, and if we carry on printing we are happy to accept a slightly lighter shade of black. Half the stuff I print – the only required quality is being legible.

But no we have these stupid sensors, like in the CM1015 and when the sensor has decided that you’ve printed enough then it makes the cartridge unusable. It’s literally like driving your car and when the petrol warning light comes on your car stops working, in doesn’t matter there’s still more petrol in it, the sensor stops your car working.

Now I know many people who routinely get 30-40% more printouts from these cartridges by reseting the chips.

Yes that’s right – you have to reset the manufacturers chip to carry on using the toner in the CM1015 toner cartridge that you have paid for !!!

Because HP sensor technology has decided that there is no toner in your cartridge and you have to buy a new one. It really makes me mad and there is only one reason they do this to make more money out of us poor saps who have to buy replacement toner cartridges. I can’t quite express how mad this makes me !

We are supposed to be reducing our consumption and waste, yet practically every printer company going is locked into this exploitative model of conning their customers in to buying more and more consumables to boost their profits. 30-40% left in the ink you have paid for but are denied, sounds pretty terrible way to treat a customer to me.

By the way for some of the HP printers like the CM1015, make sure you disable the stupid quality check which can disable your cartridges. You’ll find them in various places hidden on the menus but often somewhere like this

System Setup>Print Quality>Replace Supplies>Override out

You set this from the control panel. What you are actually doing is telling the stupid printer that you will decide when the quality requires a new cartridge. Unfortunately all sorts of printers need different techniques, from resetting chips, covering sensors with scotch tape, even opening and leaving cover door works on some models (presumably fooling the printer into thinking you’ve given it a new cartridge.)

As an industry, the printer companies have one of the most shameful, wasteful and deceitful business models. How many printers are designed to purposely mislead the owners about when their cartridges are empty. I say take all the restrictions off and let people decide.

Make sure you get the most out of the toner you have paid for, and when it’s empty find one of the many companies who can sell you all you need to refill the cartridge, typically it will be a small kit to make hole, a bottle of replacement compatible toner and either a chip resetter or a replacement chip. You’ll save up to 80% on a new cartridge and better still save valuable environmental resources by reusing something which would work perfectly fine if it hadn’t been disabled like the HP CM1015 toner cartridge is.

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