We’ve all wondered about whether we should risk refilling our cartidges with compatible toner.  Especially us laser printer owners faced with throwing or sending away that huge plastic manufactured cartridge just because it’s ran out of ink.

Last year I was faced with a bill of several hundreds of dollars to replace the laser toner cartridges in my Lexmark laser printer.  The bill was actually more than the cost of the printer and I was not very impressed.

The manufacturers of printers both inkjet and laser printers make massive profits based on what I like to call razor blade economics.  The ploy is you manufacture a device (such as a razor or printer) and then make sure that using the product is hugely expensive.  If you don’t buy the consumables (the toner or blades) then the product is useless to you.

You can refill Toner Cartridges

Less than a decade ago, most devices which used toner were refilled from a plastic bottle of ink.

You’d simply open a stopper and refill with toner ink, it was quick and simple to do.  Nowadays these companies actually develop technology to stop you refilling the cartridges.

TONER FACT 1

The average toner cartridge takes between 1 and 2 litres of oil to manufacture.   Every time you re-use that toner cartridge that’s one less that needs to be produced.

TONER FACT 2

The average toner cartridge does not need replacing when it has run out of ink.  The only reason is that the manufacturers make much more money by forcing you to buy a new laser cartridge or by making you send it back to them for ‘remanufacture’.

Should I use Compatible Toner to refill ?

If your laser printer has just run out ink, and you are looking for a replacement, stop for a minute and look at that cartridge.

• Does it look like it has been manufactured to last one print run?
• Is it falling to bits ?
• Does it look damaged or worn out?

I can tell you now, if all it’s done is sit in your printer, it’s fine there is only one problem it has run out of ink.  That’s all, nothing else, 10 years ago we would have opened a little stopped poured in some toner ink and carried on printing.

Alas the firms making these printers have taken away the stoppers allowing us to refill them,  of course they make much more money by selling us new ones. But you can still refill the vast majority of toner cartridges with compatible toner.

So if you want to Save Money, if you want to help the environment and if you want to reduce profits for the big printer companies then make sure you refill your toner cartridges with compatible toner.    There are more and more companies appearing now that do this,  please feel free to recommend any that you’ve used.

This company is one I have used on several occasions – Toner Topup , extremely knowledgeable and they have hundreds of custom kits for specific printers.

2 Responses to “Should I Refill my Cartridge with Compatible Toner?”