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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Colour laser printer toner madness....

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Grogster

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Posted: 07:49am 03 Jan 2020
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Brother HL-3150CDN colour laser printer:

- Genuine Brother toner cartridge replacement(full set): $247.59
- Clone Brother toner cartridge replacement(full set): $176.50

Completely new Brother colour laser printer: $197.50 including freight and GST.

Twenty bucks more, and I can buy a completely new printer.

Sheesh.  

Why do they even bother to make the toner cartridges replaceable in a colour laser printer these days, cos it costs you MORE to refuel the old printer, then to outright replace it.....
Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
 
matherp
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Posted: 08:45am 03 Jan 2020
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New printers have "special" cartridges with very little in them
 
Turbo46

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Posted: 09:05am 03 Jan 2020
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Be careful! My Epson inkjet wouldn't accept a Calidad cartridge. That is ant-competitive and should be illegal. Wasted money and its the last Epson I will buy.

And yes, new printers are supplied with cartridges that only print a few pages.

Bill
Keep safe. Live long and prosper.
 
OA47

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Posted: 09:42am 03 Jan 2020
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Grogs, some twenty plus years ago I had a retail IT store and there was a period where I could buy HP colour laser printers complete with FULL toner cartridges for less than the toner cartridges alone. How do you think I felt dropping brand new printers in the bin just to make a few extra dollars on the toner cartridges.
OA47
 
Davo99
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Posted: 09:51am 03 Jan 2020
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Not quite laser tone but much the same thing and maybe I can save some people some money.

I use inkjet printers and I was doing a LOT of Prints. Still do probably 4-500 A4's a year.
I used to buy A4 inkjet paper by the Pallet load. That might last me 3 Months.
I would run 12 Printers Pooled and have someone  just taking the finished prints out and filling them with new paper. That kept one person busy.
At one stage I had 37 Printers all Up. Run up to 24 at a time set up at home and used the others for on-site work and spares.  I remember someone calling BS on that on a forum so I took a pic of them all and posted it within minutes of the post and really had the last laugh.

Each A4 print was costing about $1 in ink with the OEM Carts so I decided to try the after market ink despite the dire warnings. A printer cost less than a set of Replacement carts so not a lot to loose. I rang a place and grilled the guy and he guaranteed to replace the printer with a new one if the ink stuffed it up.  Nothing to loose now.
Ordered a set of 100Ml bottles and the refillable carts which weren't cheap but for the use I'd get...

Put the " dodgy" ink in as I affectionately call it, didn't even bother with the recalibration machine and doing a new profile and set the thing going. IMHO the dodgy ink gave better results than the genuine. The  aftermarket ink gives true to life colours and far better skin tomes than the OEM which gives blazing bright over saturated colours even if you ran a specific colour profile. The problem for me with the over saturated colours is you effectively get too much contrast and not enough tonal range. Not much point paying thousands for the best lenses if you are going to sabotage half the quality you paid for them to produce.

Pretty much ran about 3 test prints and rang the guy back and ordered 4 Litre bottles of the stuff. I worked out how to drill the OEM carts and  refill them and used little rubber plugs to seal them that the Ink guy had. Still do it that way now.
We were going through the 1L bottles pretty quick so I rang the guy and said do you have 5L Bottles? His reaction was in not so many words " WTF are you doing with this stuff?" He then had a look at my account and had another fit as he realised I was his biggest customer even beyond the refilling shops. No 5L bottles but I got put on a discount to keep me onside.

Even at full tilt, my ink costs went down to under .02C per print. A Massive drop which made for huge cost savings and for a huge increase in profits.

I have been using the dodgy ink, 2 different brands now both from local suppliers, for over 10 Years and have NEVER had an ink related problem. I have told a lot of people about it and got the typical programmed response of " It will damage your printer" Or opinions that it's crap from people that have never even used it where I have printed well over 30,000 prints with it now.

The biggest problem is that the printers are programmed to only do a certain amount of prints. They count them and after the number is up, the machine stops printing under the excuse the ink absorber pad is full and needs changing.  That's about 3 times the price of the machine to have done and requires the machine be virtually stripped right down to do and you pretty much need a Jig to put it back together so not a practical DIY exercise.

 Pre planned obsolescence at it's finest. There were some By passes for that but with every generation of printer the manufactures incorporate some other BS to force you into buying their ripoff cartidges.  The latest ones have ink counters on the chip so now the chip only allows the cart to be used a certain amount of times and won't work even if the thing is full after refilling.  I just bought 5  of the last of the old generation machines that don't have this. After that, hopefully the Chinese will have come up with something to bypass it.

A canon Rep told me years ago that Ink is the most profitable thing they do and all their other products like photocopiers, medical imaging, camera's and lenses etc COMBINED are 50% of their profit and ink accounts for the rest. I'll bet those $25-29 carts are costing them about .40C to produce and the rest is sheer markup.

I still think the colours of the after market ink are better than OEM ink and I don't even profile the printers now and I'm on about the 5th generation of those.  I use canon printers and the Dye ink hasn't changed even though the printers I am running now can take Pigment ink.  That's more expensive and I don't see any need to improve what I'm getting.

I wouldn't hesitate to use aftermarket Toner either. Far as I'm aware, The OEM's don't even make their own ink and I'd imagine toner is the same.
The old adage of getting what you pay for in this case doesen't add up in any way shape or form. I'd rather have the aftermarket ink than the OEM even if I had to pay OEM prices.  For me, it's just better and gives far more realistic results.
When I first tried it I was HOPING it would be good enough, when it was better I couldn't believe it but there is no question after all these years.

Don't be suckered in by the OEM Hype. It won't stuff your printer and It will give as good or better results than OEM.
There are not a lot of people around that have used more of this stuff than I have so if someone tells you it's crap, ask them how much they have used for how long to arrive at that conclusion?  

:0)
 
Davo99
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Posted: 09:59am 03 Jan 2020
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  Turbo46 said  Be careful! My Epson inkjet wouldn't accept a Calidad cartridge. That is ant-competitive and should be illegal. Wasted money and its the last Epson I will buy.

And yes, new printers are supplied with cartridges that only print a few pages.

Bill


I have a near New Epsom up the back. I was convinced they were better so I bought one to try.  Ya!
At first when I plugged it in I thought the thing was going to self destruct. The racket it makes made me think someone had put a handfull of pebbles in the thing.
Back to back tests with my canons that were about 1'3rd of the price of this thing were very disappointing. Funny thing was, even when I set it up on Wifi for the kids to use to print with,. they didn't like it either and came back and said can't we just use one of your other old printers? They look better. Used it for photocopying till the ink ran out and then it got put up the back.  Couldn't bring myself to throw away an expensive and hardly used machine but thinking about it I might do just that tomorrow.

My father also Bought an Epsom and hated it. Same thing, makes a Noise like a shredding machine and the first print comes out about 10 min after you hit print.
I gave him one of my older canons last year with a few refilled carts and he loved it straight off.

Can't say i'd be motivated to buy Epsom ever again no matter how many people swear by them.

As far as Canon Printers go, I have NEVER seen one with less than full cartridges that gave as many prints as the replacements. Can't speak for other brands but never seen it with camon and I have owned about 80 or more of them now.
 
Davo99
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Posted: 10:04am 03 Jan 2020
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  OA47 said  Grogs, some twenty plus years ago I had a retail IT store and there was a period where I could buy HP colour laser printers complete with FULL toner cartridges for less than the toner cartridges alone. How do you think I felt dropping brand new printers in the bin just to make a few extra dollars on the toner cartridges.
OA47


From what I have seen, this has been the case with inkjets for at least 20 years.

A lot of places on fleabay now sell printers with either no ink or Non OEM replacement ink included because they make more selling the ink than the printer but when they sell both, they are making great money on the backend.

I have also taken out the OEM carts from printers I have bought and sold them on dumbtree and pretty much paid back the cost of the printer. The last lot I bought on the Daughters staff discount and MADE $20 on each set.

Free printers, Bonus!
 
CaptainBoing

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Posted: 10:50am 03 Jan 2020
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this whole market has been blown open by the EU - not fully enacted yet but they are trying  to stop this "sharp" practice - and rightly so... think of the landfill!

There are several other things the EU are doing like attempting to standardize mobile  charger plugs so manufacturers don't freeze out 3rd party markets - or even their own users from a version ago (you know who you are!).

If only the EU had been this benevolent in all their dealings, things might have gone very differently  
Edited 2020-01-03 21:05 by CaptainBoing
 
Poppy

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Posted: 11:06am 03 Jan 2020
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As all technical/electronic stuff got so cheap abusing "slave workers" in China or wherever else it is all just a matter of marketing-calculations, the superficial costs we monetarily pay are not the real costs, they are just fictional!

Do not forget the calculated lifetime, the planned obsolescence for each machine you buy, or particularly printer having a defined number of sheets they print within a certain time!

Probably this is different between the continents, but in Europe I only consider a device“s lifespan being hopefully about 2 years, no matter what kind it is!

So the consumer can make his own calculation on this and sometimes it individually comes out with a positive result, but in the end we all are a part of the global junk problem!

... and most producers support this status quo!



One exception (the only I could find yet), my washing machine is a MIELE with a 10 Year Full-Warrantee (at least)!

Andre ... such a GURU?
 
Turbo46

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Posted: 12:45pm 03 Jan 2020
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My previous printers were Canon. At least when they said a cartridge was 'empty' they would still allow you to print until you could actually see that the cartridge was empty AND I could use non OEM cartridges.

But the Epson says "nope, the cartridge is empty and you're not printing until you change it'. I just need to keep a tissue under it when I change it so it doesn't drip ink on anything. It uses 4 cartridges and the black one is the same size as the colour ones. Guess which one runs out first? Good one Mr. Epson!

I wish I'd never bought the damn thing.

My next printer will be another Canon.

Bill
Edited 2020-01-03 22:46 by Turbo46
Keep safe. Live long and prosper.
 
gadgetjack
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Posted: 05:06pm 03 Jan 2020
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I have a HP laser now. Toner set is less than $40. I had a Brother once. It caught fire and I had to throw it outside (really).
 
CaptainBoing

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Posted: 05:43pm 03 Jan 2020
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I had a Minolta color laser and it was a right cow with the four toner cartridges mounted on the rotating drum, changing them was a nightmare...

One day, as a much younger man, having struggled for some time with this (hours!) Mrs.Boing was startled by a loud crash from the back yard and a strangely calm Me coming downstairs. She asked what the noise was and I explained that after several fruitless hours, Mr Angry had paid a visit and that somehow, the printer had gone out of the landing window to end up on the back yard from about 12 feet up... Mystery! She exclaimed (again) that I was mad to which I explained that may be, but I'm not the one in bits on the patio.

A nice calm cup of coffee, a read of the days post then out with a large box and a hose, never to be pushed by that techno-bully ever again.
 
TassyJim

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Posted: 07:38pm 03 Jan 2020
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Last year, just as I started to print the Christmas cards, my HP printer warned about low toner in some of the colours.
I dutifully purchased a set of colour and black toners but kept printing with the old toners.

It was during this years Christmas card print run that the toners finally did run out.

I do have an old Canon inkjet in the shed along with a pile of el-cheapo inks but I find the laser much more convenient to use so the Canon remains unloved.

Toners are very expensive but I get 3-4 years out of a set so not complaining.

Jim
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Grogster

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Posted: 11:27pm 03 Jan 2020
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Wow - more replies then I thought I would get on this thread!  

@ matherp & Turbo46: So I have heard, but I am still using the original toner that came with this printer, and I have been printing on those original ones for at least 2 years, probably close to three by now.  I have never replaced any of the toner cartridges since I bought the printer.  So, while I certainly don't doubt what you say, that has NOT been the case for me.  Perhaps Brother ship full cartridges with their new printers and it is only some of the other brands that put low-capacity ones in their new printers - who can say.  In any event, I've had a really good run of printing on the toner that came with the printer, so not sure how that fits into the equation.

@ Davo99: Yes, my last inkjet was an Epson, and I put one of those external ink reservoir kit things on it, and it printed for ages and ages on that setup.  If I ever bought another inkjet, that would be the way I would want to refuel it.  I need colour laser, as I make my own labels for things now, and inkjet is notorious for the ink running if it gets even SLIGHTLY damp.  You can soak a colour laser label and the colours stay put, which is why I am on the colour laser now and not still on a good quality inkjet.
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BrianP
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Posted: 11:37pm 03 Jan 2020
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As with all things, YMMV!

I recommend to my clients to only use the "genuine" ink / toner while the printer is still under warranty (the manufacturers love to say "sorry, you have used non-oem, go away...").

With all printers, make sure you set the default print to "fast", "draft" or "economy" depending on which is relevant for your printer. You will only notice the difference with colour prints, & it is easy to change the setting for the current print job only. You probably don't know that most printers still use some colour ink even if you are printing black text only - draft mode can save over double the consumables compared to the "normal" default.

All this reminds me of a Canon A3 inkjet printer I used to have (still do, but it's now in the store shed). Monochrome only, had a magnificent size ink cartridge. Problem was, if you used a non-genuine ink the printer would clog up & no longer work. Turned out that there was a porous mesh filter in the ink path that was purposely designed to swell up & block the ink flow if you used an ink that didn't have a special ingredient to prevent this. Once you knew this, just remove the "filter" & all was well.

Bet they wouldn't dare try this these days!

B
 
Davo99
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  CaptainBoing said  
She asked what the noise was and I explained that after several fruitless hours, Mr Angry had paid a visit and that somehow, the printer had gone out of the landing window to end up on the back yard from about 12 feet up... Mystery!


I remember a very similar thing....

I had pulled apart a photo processing machine that had an insert of a bunch of rollers and plates and gears all sandwiched between 2 end plates. You put the paper in one end of the machine, it went through the 3 baths and came out the other end. I had to take it apart to clean it.

Same thing, after many hours of telling myself to be patient and calm and every time I about had the thing together, some piece would pop out requiring me to start all over again. I finally lost my sh*t and hurled the 7Kg lump at the studio wall with an almighty crash that shook the place. The hole in the wall was significant.

I sat there thinking now what am I going to do ( apart from patch the wall) but felt somewhat better as I tried to calm myself from going and getting a shotgun and really finishing the thing off.

Mrs came out and saw what had happened and said something like well now you have done it.  The processor was worth BIG money at the time and not all that old.
She went over and picked it up and I was looking at the wall and I'm sitting there saying to myself, " NO! Not possible!"  I had her bring it to me and no word of a lie, the thing was back together perfectly. Nothing broken or bent or other than it should be. I tightened the screws on the end plate, dropped it back in the machine and never had a problem with the thing again.

Mrs gave me grief about the wall of course, but I told her, if I knew that's all I had to do to get the mongeral back together, I'd have hurled the goddamn thing hours ago.  Patched the wall and repainted it a new colour which I had been thinking about and was more than happy to do it. That too turned out for the best as it looked much better than before and I got comments on what a great feature wall it was.

I can't ever remember loosing my temper working out so well any other time in my life but that time worked out very nice. Must have been Karma for the 5-6 Hours I had spent on the thing choking back my rage till I couldn't hold it back any longer.
 
Davo99
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Posted: 12:35am 04 Jan 2020
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  Grogster said  
and inkjet is notorious for the ink running if it gets even SLIGHTLY damp.


It all depends on the paper you use. Not that I suppose you get much choice with what surface and weight you want with Lables.

When I first started taking Inkjets seriously I went to the photo show in town.  They had different units set up and knowing I wanted to look at these I took my own files on a CD and got the rep to print one for me. The Canon stand was on the edge of the exhibit area near bathrooms.  I questioned about the ink running and the rep said you can pour water on them and nothing will happen. Yeah right!.

Got her to do another print and grabbed it out the machine and ran to the toilets 20 Ft away and stuck the print under the tap.  Not a thing happened.
Dried it off under the hand drier and you could not tell a think wrong with it or a mark on it.  And if you use decent photo paper, that's the way they are.  In all the years and 10's of thousands of prints I have done, NEVER had a complaint about running colours yet.

If you are using plain paper that won't hold the ink the same, yes, they will run but on decent photopaper, don't now how but never seen it yet. Cheap crap paper I would expect would be different. There is a lot of Rubbish out there.

When I was printing loads of prints everyone out there wanted to sell me paper. I'd say send a pack of A4 glossy and I'll test it. Most of it looked like crap. These days I only use the Kodak Ultra premium branded paper because it is damn good paper and I can get it far cheaper than anything else. The  Canon and epsom papers are also good but much more exy than the Koderk.  

I used to buy the costco paper by the pallet. You can do special orders with them and they will load it for you in a trailer with a forklift.  When I went to order my 4th pallet, they said it was discontinued.  Wouldn't bring it in for me any more even though it's still available in the states. That stuff was very good and cheaper than anyone else could match. There was another one I used for a short time that looked good but faded  really quick if it were not behind glass or in an album. I guess no UV stabilisation in it.  At first I thought it was the dodgy ink I hadn't been using that long till the mrs pointed out 2 Pics on the front of our fridge, one on canon paper and the other on the other stuff both printed with the same ink.
That stuff quickly got 86'ed .

Might have a look on fleabay now and see if there is any deals going on Kodak paper. I only have about 500 sheet in stock and I'll be needing about 1000 or so before too long. I found some at a Cheap dollar shop 3 years ago while following the mrs round.
So cheap I couldn't believe it. Went and asked them how much they had? They said how much you want? I said I'll take a box.  Turned out they had 14 Boxes of the stuff, 200 sheets per box so I took it all. The owner of the place was stoked, as was I and said That's the best sale I have had in a month, I'm going home early and going out to dinner tonight.

I don't know what she paid for it but I thought it was a gift so everyone was happy.  Unfortunately she wasn't able to get any more which was a bummer. Down to my last couple of boxes of that now. :0(
 
Davo99
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  BrianP said  

With all printers, make sure you set the default print to "fast", "draft" or "economy" depending on which is relevant for your printer. You will only notice the difference with colour prints, & it is easy to change the setting for the current print job only.


I only ever use the standard setting for the ink. Mate in the states who also does a few prints and I have both confirmed on Canon's at least, all the " Photo" mode does is slow the machine down and use more ink without any visible improvement in quality. Not sure how they achieve this but we have tested it numerous times and cannot see any difference in output quality what so ever.

The other thing is every time you turn the printer on ( or off) it runs a cleaning cycle which is very heavy on ink. I never used to turn mine off but the newer ones will shut themselves down even if you tell the things not to.

The ink is also controlled by the paper surface setting you put in and this DOES make a difference. I always set that for the best quality paper when I am using photo paper and the correct surface ( glossy/ Matt). You can get bleed or grainy pics if that is not set correctly. I set the machines to Photo paper but standard printing mode and it works fine.

Always chasing the very best quality prints but the photo setting makes no difference at all to the outputs.
 
ceptimus
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A guy I used to work with used to bore everyone rigid at every opportunity explaining how he saved money by refilling his printer cartridges.  He drilled holes in cartridges that were not designed to be refilled, squirted in ink using a syringe and then sealed the holes with tiny bungs or tape.

One day, I realized that he'd gone for about a year without retelling his stories and asked him why.  He admitted that he'd accidentally spilt ink all over himself, his wife, his sofa, and lounge fitted carpet during a refill mishap.  It cost him well over a thousand pounds to buy new clothes, carpet, and sofa.  That incident had caused him to rethink his money-saving scheme, and made him reluctant to talk about it too.
 
Davo99
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  Grogster said  

I put one of those external ink reservoir kit things on it, and it printed for ages and ages on that setup.  If I ever bought another inkjet, that would be the way I would want to refuel it.


Yeah, I had those too when I was doing a lot of printing. I modified a couple so they would do 2 printers at once with the little connectors and silicone tubing the suppliers offered as spares. I have about a dozen or more of them up the back.

They were great for stationary use but in my event trailer, they were problematic. They don't like to be moved and they must be at the same height as the printer. They sure can be messy damn things when they go wrong. Went back to just using reloaded carts in those printers and any I took onsite. Don't do anything like I used to now and not all at once so I just but the cheapo chinese carts, use the ink for printing price lists and other non important things then refill the carts and use them over and over. 5 sets of carts is enough for any one sitting and then I refill them before I go again.

The remote tanks were great when doing bulk prints though. Could fill them up each morning and not have to worry about ink again for the rest of the day. We'd get about 400 A4's per fill. One colour is always used more than the other so one always ran out while the others were hardly touched.  Often there was only a need to refill that one colour for several days. With what I did it was always Cyan or yellow depending on the actual job.

I see now canon has these printers with the bulk ink tanks built in. Of course covered their arses by making the printers 4x what they should cost though.
Mate has one and reckons it's great. I wonder if they too have some sort of print limit built in?

I have never worn or blocked a head I couldn't clean but I have thrown away tens of printers even some a week old because they hit their internal print limit.
Thats the hypocrisy of these company's promoting crap like saving the environment with Biodegradable inks and low power consumption/ auto shut off. They render the product useless and relegated to landfill under false, Profit motivated, pretences.
 
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