My wife loves to send holiday greeting cards by snail mail featuring a full 8.5" x 11" collage of family pictures. Her list is 400 names long. With printing and postage, this turns out to be an expensive proposition. I couldn't do anything about the postage, but I thought there must be a way to reduce the printing costs. I have a Canon inkjet photo printer, but the cost is $1.00 page. Kinko's wanted $250 for the job. What to do?
The thought occurred to me that a color laserjet might do the trick. A bit of Internet research narrowed the choices down to a couple of the least expensive models. One of them was a Brother Model MFC-9120CN, with a list price of $400. A local Internet search found that machine on sale for $300 at an Office Max in San Francisco. Since I live in Petaluma, some 45 miles away, I called the local Staples and asked if they would price match. Not only did they say 'yes', but offered to deliver it free to my home the next day! I took the deal.
I figured that set of toner cartridges that came with the printer would easily handle the 400 prints, so that, even if I ran out of toner, the net cost for the holiday cards would be the $327 I paid for the printer, and I would still have the printer for next year's holiday cards plus anything else I wanted to print, fax, copy or scan, all features included with this printer.
But you know what they say about best-laid plans. Halfway through the holiday card job, I ran out of toner! Apparently, my research was not good enough to find out that the manufacturers short change toner in the cartridges that are provided with new laser printers. Here is the skinny on toner for color lasers. My comments apply to Brother, but the other companies are essentially the same.
Replacement name-brand cartridges are about $75 each. You need four of them (yellow, cyan, magenta, black) for a color laser printer, so that comes to $300 for the complete set. Online Chinese clone cartridges sell for around $45 each or $180 for the set. I was stunned. However, there is a savior - toner REFILLS. These are squeeze-bottles of toner powder. You simply remove the cartridge filler cap, squeeze in the powder and replace the cap. The bottles come with new caps in case you damage one in the removal process. The cost of a complete four-color set of toner refills is about $70! They contain a full toner charge, not the short-change amount that comes with the machine.
I don't know if the other printer manufacturers do the same thing, but the cartridges that came with my printer had a part missing. That part is called a "Flag Gear" and it it won't let you print any more if it thinks the toner is out. You have to reset the gear every time you refill the cartridge. This is the manufacturer's attempt to force the unknowing consumer to purchase new cartridges. Fortunately, you can buy a complete set of flag gears for $12. Resetting them takes a few seconds. They will last forever.
On each end of a cartridge, there is a "window" through which a laser beam is directed. The beam is blocked when there is enough toner to cover the windows. When the toner level drops below the windows, the laser beam shines through, the low toner light comes on and stops printing. However, when this happens, there is plenty of toner left in the cartridge! You can see it by tilting the cartridge and looking through the windows.. Avoid the problem by placing a piece of black electrical tape over the windows or coloring them in with a Sharpie! On average, you will get another 1000 copies out of that cartridge!
A quick Google search will turn up several toner suppliers on the Internet. However, my favorite is a company called Inkowl. Not only are their prices great, but they offer terrific technical support from English speakers.
In conclusion, it is possible to do color laser printing for a lot less that the $.15 - $.30 page quoted in manufacturer's articles. I figure my average cost is around $.05/page. Let me know if you can do better.
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