Although they supply US and Canada it's not really worth it outside Europe - let me know if you know a good company for there!
Brother HL-4070CDW and the Brother TN-115BK Cartridge
Now I won’t have too much of a go at Brother, they’re not nearly as bad as some of the other printer companies. But if you’ve never used one of these printers let me tell you about a stupid little device that brother have fitted on all the toner cartridges for the Brother HL4070CDW and a few other printers.
Many of the brother printers or rather cartridges count the number of pages that they are supposed to print and then stop working. So how ridiculous is that, in many cases you’ll see that the cartridge still has toner still left inside it, in some instances this can quite a considerable amount.
Brother HL4070CDW Toner
So how stupid is that ?
It’s a device that tells you when you have run out of toner, even if you haven’t and then stops your printer working. Lets look at this from an environmental side, this little device has been designed and produced for the sole purpose of telling you to replace your cartridge.
Of course there is another way of seeing when your printer is running out of toner, by looking at the page. It doesn’t really take Sherlock Holmes to figure out when you need more ink.
Now you can reset these cartridges, on the side you should find a little flag gear which you can rotate and reset this stupid invention. At the time of writing this wasn’t on the starter cartridge you get with the machine, presumably so that you’ll get fleeced on your very first print run.
How much toner does this waste? How many cartridges will get thrown away because of this device stopping them using a toner cartridge for no reason?
Or perhaps we should ask – how many more TN-115BK cartridges will Brother sell, how much more profit will they make to justify this completely unnecessary device? It’s like your fuel warning light coming on in your car and the car becoming unusable instantly!
This is how most of these companies make money, by getting you to buy as many of their consumables as possible, forget about the cost of the printer this is how they make their money. Environmentally it is becoming increasingly unacceptable to do this !
By the way when you have learnt the little trick to reset the page count device, these toner cartridges are actually very easy to refill – you can find all you need here – TonerTopup
I just had all three toner cartridges ending at the same time again. I am very unhappy. I weighed the Cyan toner cartridge. I actually have just consumed 10 grams of the Cyan toner. This is a crime what Brother is doing!! If I print a single dot of blue color on one page. Brother stops me from printing any more pages after 4000 single dots!! A new Brother Cyan toner cartridge of TN-115C costs $137.99 at Staples. That means the Brother toner costs 454g/10g x $137.99= $6,265 per pound. The raw materials for the toner ingredients cost less than $5 per pound. The profit margins for Brother is 125,300%.
Brother- you need to let people print until the toners are truly consumed, not by your set page counter!!
I agree Sam – it’s a damn scandal. The worst of it is that all these companies portray themselves as environmentally friendly whilst at the same time producing technology that actually wastes resources simply to boost their bank balances! Fancy making you throw away something that’s not empty….
I recently bought this printer but I purchased it off the HP internet site because it was cheaper. I sincerely like the way my printed copies look—very professional and the ink does not smudge. I set up the wireless choice on both my windows os and mac os laptop computers. When setting up my macbook, it was tough but I detected that once the software package was installed on my macbook and I removed the USB printer cable from the macbook and turned the printer off and then on—-the wireless system operated?! Setting up wirelessly with the Windows Vista operating system was real smooth. This is nice looking printer and I am delighting it thus far.
hai friends, i also have a hl 4070cdw brother printer and have the same problem with it. but i found a way to reset this. what you must do is just ad a little piece of electrical tape black on both side of the drum unit where the sensors or reading the level of the ink. and the second what you must do is use a screwdriver and open at the side of the gear of the cartrige. than rotate the gear which is not fully in gear but half. you can find this gear unit beside the upper screw. i have a gray one in my cartrige. the others are white. rotate the gray one only and screw it back. your printer will work again.
Hi Dinesh….sounds like the fix for me….but I am not technical…can you tell me what you mean by the side gear of the cartridge….can you give me a little more of a description….I have new toners and old toners…and they all still say end of life…so very frustrated….same model 4070. Thanks.