Refill laser toner cartridge?

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geekIT

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#143479 16-Apr-2014 12:26

I'm sure this topic has been thrashed to death somewhere, but here goes:
I have a Brother HL-2130 laser printer. This model has a toner cartridge that drops into the main cartridge assembly (which holds the drum\fuser).
The toner cartridge looks like it would be a sitter to be refilled, as it has a little plastic cap on the side.
Is this possible? It seems such a waste of dough to spring $40-$50 for a new cart when a couple of bucks would surely suffice for a toner refill.
I've always thought the whole home-printer toner replacement business was some sort of racket. Years back, when I worked in an office, all we needed to do when the toner ran low in our big printer\copier was to grab a new pot of toner out of the cupboard and toss it in. 2 minutes and about $10.
Any thoughts on this, geeks?

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old3eyes

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#1026143 16-Apr-2014 12:33

I've only had failure from refilling toner carts. Give it a try though assuming that the toner you are putting in is compatible..

Regards,

Old3eyes

1101

3122 posts

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#1026241 16-Apr-2014 14:52

Just take it along to cartridge world & they will refill it for you.

Yep, brother carts are dead easy to refill, you need to use the correct toner though.
Some also need to be 'reset', some dont need a reset.

I used to refill toner carts for a job. Never as reliable as a new toner cart but....
some refill toner carts like that brother shouldnt give issues . You should be able to get YOUR cart refilled.
make sure you get some sort of guarantee
do a printout of the printers page count (if possible), to make sure the refill lasts as long as it should.

robjg63

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#1026252 16-Apr-2014 15:07

As above - not all toner is the same - get the wrong toner and your printer will be stuffed!

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coffeebaron

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#1026461 16-Apr-2014 21:36

From my experience over the years in IT, I will never use refilled cartridges or non genuine. I have seen too many issues. Back in my early days of IT, we used support the a few of the Banks IT and they went through the stage of cartridge refills etc. Often we would get call outs for printing issues, swap out there refilled cartridge for a genuine new one, send them a big fat bill.
We also had banks re-inking ATM printer ribbons. Had a couple of machines almost catch fire. We also tested a batch of these ribbons. Result, on average they would last 30% the life of a genuine new. Re-inking cost was 50% of new. They soon saw the economic sense in only using genuine new.

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mattwnz

20141 posts

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#1026468 16-Apr-2014 21:53

I have been using refilled cartrdidges for an HP basic laser printer since 1995, so nearly 20 years and have never had any problems. However some printers are more suitable than others, as some toners have the drum built in. The stupid thing is that you can buy a printer cheaper than the cost of a genuine laser toner cartridge. The cost of refilled toners has however come down alot. WHen I first started buying them they were about 70-80 dollars, and I believe they were filled here in NZ. However I noticed that the company I was using moved to a cheaper product imported from china, which still worked fine, however they had kept the price the same. So I looked on trademe, and there were traders selling the same exact refills for $20-30. I have been purchasing a few of these over the last few years, and they work just fine. As the printer is worth very little, there is very little risk for me, because if it stuffs up, I just get another printer. But only ever had two lasers over the last 20 years, both HP.

geekIT

2417 posts

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#1027675 19-Apr-2014 10:50

Guys, thanks for all the informed comment. I'll check out TradeMe for deals on laser refills. As I said, it seems like the Brother cartridge-in-cartridge might be a good candidate for refilling.

BTW, for anyone else who uses a fair bit of regular ink, this outfit is great:

https://www.consumables.co.nz/2-167-4858/Product/PIXMA_MX726

As an IT guy, I've not only been using their ink cartridges on my own printers for the last several years, but I've steered many customers in that direction also.

Example: A Canon cart for my MX726 is around $27. A 'compatible' cart is around $13. Freight is free, fast and a couple of toffees in the pack provide additional sweetening :-)

PS: I have no ties of any kind to the company; I just like to spread the word about good deals.

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richms

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#1027691 19-Apr-2014 11:56

For black and white you are fine on even junk refills but with greyscale prints then there are huge variances in quality of different toners. One I tried basically had full coverage at anything above about 70% and then quickly tapered off to near nothing at about 40% so any photos looked really dramatic and useless.

As for colour lasers. My one attempt at a swap to 3rd party carts made for orange people and cyan grass so I quickly gave up.

Richard rich.ms