Printer toners - "elementary" mistake!

[Dave2002]

The toner in our Brother laser printer seemed to be giving out. As it has other problems I was reluctant to buy expensive cartridges, so I bought a much cheaper pack of compatible cartridges.

While trying to install one of these I discovered (ha!) that I'd forgotten how to access the drum and toner cartridge, so after a while I discovered some videos which enabled me to access the relevant parts. The most helpful - for my purposes - turned out to be in a language I don't really know - though I'm pretty sure from the word endings - "ul" - that it was Romanian. Seeing the compartment open in that video was very helpful.

The exercise of trying to find instructions which were good enough to enable me to complete the replacement task also found another video suggesting shaking the toner cartridge gently to loosen up the powder before installing. This made me wonder - "What if I just shook up the toner in the already installed cartridge?".

The answer - shaking the toner cartridge - or rocking it back and forth gently and then reinserting it into the unit puts it back into working order - really rather good quality prints now - so the result of all this is that I have now put the replacement cartridge I was intending to use back into the box, for the time when the current toner cartridge really does run out. Possibly I may also have a few older ones which could also be resurrected in this way - who knows!

Maybe this will help someone else who is using laser printers.

[Old Grumpy]

Toner probably running out anyway, so at least you have a spare now!

[Dave2002]

Toner probably running out anyway, so at least you have a spare now!

Yes - but the quality of the "original" is now much better than it was. Allegedly it's possible to get several more months out of these with this technique - which I'd all but forgotten about. So what's wrong with having a few more extra months of life out of something like this - except that the manufacturers/distributors might not like us to be so conservative?

[french frank]

So what's wrong with having a few more extra months of life out of something like this

Just common sense, I'd say. I'd take the initial signs that the cartridge needs replacing as a hint to get the new one at once so that the old one doesn't run out at an inconvenient moment. Then change over when a good old shake doesn't work any more. I replace my HP Laserjet toner with a refill replacement from a local supplier. Much cheaper and works fine. I gave up on trying to use compatible ink cartridges in my Epson inkjet as it kept displaying accusatory messages that I wasn't using proper Epson ones. Intimidated, I now buy new Epson cartidges.

[Dave2002]

I gave up on trying to use compatible ink cartridges in my Epson inkjet as it kept displaying accusatory messages that I wasn't using proper Epson ones. Intimidated, I now buy new Epson cartidges.

Some Epson compatibles are OK - but some are absolutely useless. We switched to cheap ones when one of our printers became so old that its value was probably less than that of the cartridges, but it kept going for years. I've just had to order a new large capacity cartridge - genuine Epson - for one of our remaining ink jet printers which is still in OK condition and which we keep as it's also a scanner. The Brother is also a scanner - but that no longer works. I looked into the cost of getting it repaired, and it just isn't worth it - but it works fine as a laser printer.

[Dave2002]

Another curiosity with the Brother laser printer. Recently it started putting images on to print outs. These were various photos which we'd stored on the computer - running MacOS., and they were merged with the desired text. Two of us use the same computer - sometimes - so naturally we blame each other - or the computer OS for not managing the multi-user environment well enough.

I tried deleting the printer driver - and resinstalling it. Didn't work. There didn't seem to be a newer one anyway - but the problem came back.

I also looked at the applications we were printing from - some of them had features I didn't know about - such as to print images as well as text. Turned all of those off - still no luck.

Finally - in desperation thought to try doing a test print. That worked, and whatever the problem was it seems to have gone away.

It did appear to be a corrupted print queue, or something in the print queue refusing to clear out - and I fear I also suspected a virus. I had many attempts at clearing the print queues before doing the print test.

Whatever it was, it does now seem to be working again - so if all else fails, try doing a print test.