Toner Cartridge - A Learner's Guide

What Is A Toner Cartridge?

A laser printer is lifeless without a toner cartridge. A consumable part of the laser printer, the toner cartridge is used to print text and images on paper. A toner cartridge consist of a toner power, a fine, dry mixture of plastic particles, carbon, black and other coloring materials to produce image on paper. Electrostatically charged drum unit is used to transferred the toner to the paper fusing the paper by heated rollers du Variants.

The Low-end to Mid-range Laser Printers contains two consumable parts: (a) The toner cartridge (typical capacity 2,000 pages) (b) The Drum Unit (typical capacity 40,000 pages).

There are toner cartridges that incorporate the Drum Unit in its design. This simply means that every time you replace the toner you have to replace the drum unit too. For some this is not cost effective and quite unnecessary.

Cartridge Types

Genuine: It is also known as "original" or "OEM." Manufactured by the printer manufacturers, it offers guarantees if you use genuine brand toner but threaten if you do not. This brand of cartridges is more expensive than refills, compatibles or re-manufactured cartridges. But if you are smart enough you can purchase this brand of cartridges from a specialist retailer cutting down on price drastically.

Compatible: It is also called "Generic" or "Alternative Brand" because it is manufactured by a third party companies and sold under different brand name as it is not produce by the original companies. Due to patent law and restriction, this cartridge looks slightly different in design. Some argues that this particular cartridge is less reliable but no one dispute its cost-effective component compared to the original cartridges.

Toner's Build

Through the air jet milling, toner has been made by compounding the ingredients creating slab that is broken or pelletized turning into fine powder with controlled particle size. This leads to toner granules in varying sizes and spherical shapes. For a better result some companies are using a chemical process to grow toner particles from molecular reagents for more uniform size and shape of toner particles that permits accurate color production and efficient toner use.

Prices

Sometimes toner cartridges can be costlier than the printer. But prices of toner exceed that of the printer if only the laser printer is of inferior and cheap quality. So logically those who owns a cheap quality laser printer usually disposes of the printer when it runs out of toner and replace the entire machine little knowing that the machine usually comes with 1/3 full of inks or toners. However, if consumers want to cut on their cost they can purchase generic brand laser toners manufactured by companies other than the printer manufacturer which is flooded in the market at a very low rates.

Clean-up Operation

Never use cold water to wash toner as it washes off skin and garments, but hot or warm water softens the toner bonding it in place. Toner should not be vacuumed with a conventional home cleaner. If by mistake toner spills over to laser printer then use electrically conductive hose and a high efficiency (HEPA) filter for effective cleaning.

Source: Ezinearticles