QUALITY LASER RECHARGING

Every time you discard a laser cartridge, it adds additional waste to our already overburdened landfills. Each laser cartridge takes about 1000 years to biodegrade! Please help us in this way to preserve our environment by recycling your old toner cartridges. For more information, see "Ink Refilling and the Environment."

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INK AND TONER?

Toner is a very fine synthetic powder that is inside all laser cartridges. It is the equivalent of ink inside inkjet cartridges. When a thick layer of toner is placed on a sheet of paper and heated, it fuses with the paper to form an image. Most laser cartridge models contain from 150 to about 600 grams of toner. The more toner in the cartridge, the more pages can be printed. A typical cartridge can print about 3,000 black and white pages, and high volume cartridges can print 20,000 pages and more.

Color laser printers contain four cartridges, each with a different color of toner. The four typical color cartridges are black, yellow, magenta and cyan. It is the mixing of these four toners that produces the various desired colors you see on a printed page.

Inside the cartridge is a drum, a long spherical roller that is used to deposit toner. Two wiper blades, akin to windshield wipers in a car, move along the drum and move toner onto the surface of the drum. Both the drum and wiper blades wear out with printing. With most laser printers, it is recommended that the drum and blades are either replace or refurbished when the cartridge is refilled. Some manufacturers keep the drum in a separate cartridge from the toner. In the case of Brother laser printers, the drum should be replaced every fifth time that the toner cartridge is recharged. Mixing toner batches is never a good idea. The new toner mixed with the residual toner left on the drum can result in poor print quality. Therefore, it is recommended that the drum unit be cleaned when swapping a new OEM cartridge with a cartridge refilled by us.