It’s a perfectly good question, on this blog I urge you to investigate the few firms who can help you refill your toner cartridge with ease. Every time you do refill the cartridge you’re saving about 60-80% of the cost of a new cartridge, and there is virtually no environmental impact. But how many times can you keep refilling a laser toner cartridge.

But I’m afraid it’s actually quite a difficult question, it’s a bit like asking how long your car will last or how many years before my TV needs replacing. There is no specific correct answer as it tends to vary from cartridge to cartridge but for the vast majority of cartridges two or three is easily achievable. Many people keep refilling them until the printouts start being affected.

There are a couple of main reasons why you can’t keep refilling the toner cartridges indefinitely –

OPC Drum – inside your Toner cartridge, where the image is created before being copied onto the page. This will eventually wear our, however it will often keep going for many refills – it depends on the make. There are some printers where this drum can be replaced separately though, so that no longer becomes an issue.

Toner Waste – Toner cartridges all collect their own waste, the unused ink from a printout usually gets collected in a waste section of the cartridge. Eventually this will overflow and cause marks to appear on the printed page. You can empty this manually to extend the life, in much the same way as you make a little hole to refill. In most cartridges you can make a hole in the waste compartment to empty it. Personally I never bother with this step as normally I can get two or three refills without emptying this section.

Emptying the waste compartment can make your toner go on into double figures for some printers though which would save literally hundreds of dollars. Use any reliable refill firm and ask them their advice, they’ll know the average number of refills for your particular cartridge. Just remember even refilling once is going to save you a lot of money and more than half your printing costs.

So How Many Times Can I Refill a Toner Cartridge Then !

Of course it depends on what your printing and what for. I generally refill twice then the third time only put a little ink in and watch the quality. If the print out perhaps starts getting smudges or a reduction in quality then I’ll replace the cartridge with a new one and start again.

The printer companies will always discourage this practice, they’ll hint at damage to the printer which is simply not true (unless you do something incredibly stupid – like refill with something other than ink!). But remember the cost of a new set of cartridges often costs more than a new printer – incredible but true. My last Lexmark laser printer cost me $200 and the refills cost well over $300. Even if I had destroyed the printer every time I used a refill it would have made sense to do this.

The simple facts are that it saves money and helps the environment – check it out!!!

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