Laser Printer

This is totally off topic but may be of interest to those who own a laser printer.  I have a Brother HL-2270DW laser printer. It seems to get a Toner Low warning after a quite short period of time. One way to extend the toner life is to take out the cartridge and give it an easy shake. 

More importantly, this printer gives the low toner warning and will eventually stop printing even though there is plenty of life left in the cartridge. What you have to to do is to fake the printer into thinking the cartridge is OK. I found out how do this on the Internet. Through a combination of moves this is possible. In fact I got an extra six months out of my last cartridge by doing this.

I know this is only for the Brother printer that I have but here are the series of convoluted moves that are required.

1. Open the front cover and leave open while completing the steps.
2. Turn printer off.
3. Hold the "go" button while turning the printer on.
4. All lights should go out.
5. Release the "go" button.
6. Press the "go" button 2 times.
7. Pause. All panel lights should be on.
8. Press the "go" button 5 times.
9. The toner light should be off (error may be flashing) and the paper light should be on or flashing.
10. Close the cover.
11. The ready light should be the only light on.

Crazy but it works for me.  There are probably instructions on the Internet on how to do this with other printers.

I have a  Brother Printer and to me it seems to use up the colour cartridges far too quickly, seeing as most of my printing is done in black ink.

I am going to give this a try, when I am in the mood to do so. I have a set of new cartridges ready, so I will try this first and see if I can delay changing to the new ones.  I have made up my mind that when the new cartridges are required and then used up, I will ditch this printer as it is too expensive to run when not being able to offset it against business expenses.

I had my HP LaserJet 6L for about 15 years until I could no longer buy cartridges for it.
It was dead simple.

Kelejan wrote:I have a  Brother Printer and to me it seems to use up the colour cartridges far too quickly, seeing as most of my printing is done in black ink.

I am going to give this a try, when I am in the mood to do so. I have a set of new cartridges ready, so I will try this first and see if I can delay changing to the new ones.  I have made up my mind that when the new cartridges are required and then used up, I will ditch this printer as it is too expensive to run when not being able to offset it against business expenses.

I had my HP LaserJet 6L for about 15 years until I could no longer buy cartridges for it.
It was dead simple.

Kelejan ... the instructions I provided will only work with the specific Brother printer I mentioned.

I really like my Brother laser printer. It was not expensive and I buy clone cartridges rather than true Brother cartridges. I pay about $24 for a clone versus $70 for a true Brother and the quality is just as good. I get my cartridges from http://www.123inkcartridges.ca/

Thanks for that info, TD.  I have used that supplier in the past and I think I will use them again when my cartridges run out. I have steered people to them in the past when my supplier did not have the compatibles on stock.  A good Canadian business.

Kelejan, It sounds like you have an INKJET printer; whereas, TD had a LASER printer.
They are 2 very different technologies and what TD is doing will not work for an INKJET printer.

To conserve ink on my printers, I set the default printer preference to DRAFT mode. That uses less ink but prints at a lower quality. If I have a document that I need to printer at a higher quality, I change the setting for that print job only.

TD, I am not sure about your printer but a lot of them have a setting that causes the printer to stop when the Toner is low; however, this can be set to Continue on Low Toner.
Here is a link to the Brother's Support Page: Toner Continue Mode

My printer is a BROTHER MFC-9330CDW  and uses Toner Cartridges.

ralitaco wrote:TD, I am not sure about your printer but a lot of them have a setting that causes the printer to stop when the Toner is low; however, this can be set to Continue on Low Toner.
Here is a link to the Brother's Support Page: Toner Continue Mode

True but I think the workaround I presented goes beyond the Toner Continue Mode. I believe it also stops the Status Monitor from nagging you with Toner Low, etc. messages which I believe you will still get in Toner Continue Mode.

Kelejan, WOW a color laser printer...not too many folks have those. 

TD, those warnings, prompts, etc are annoying. I just got rid of a printer that would not print because it said the drum needed to be replaced.

ralitaco wrote:Kelejan, WOW a color laser printer...not too many folks have those. 

TD, those warnings, prompts, etc are annoying. I just got rid of a printer that would not print because it said the drum needed to be replaced.

The reason I have a colour printer is that I had a business so that I could offset the cost against income.

Thanks to TD who reminded me of www.123inkcartridges.ca a Canadian compatible printer cartridge supplier who sells to the public as well as distributors, a full set of original cartridges that would cost me $390 now will cost me $100.  In addition the originals' colour cartridges were the regular size but the compatibles fill the cartridges full so are equal to the Hi Yield of the originals.

Using a laser printer does make the cost per copy reasonable compared to using ink.

Clone cartridges...  We currently have an HP Officejet 7500 ink jet printer ..it eats the inks . So thought we were being clever when we got clones .. for some reason recently they have not been giving the correct colours everything is a few shades or more out & that's even after we had used two full sets of new clones..

Hmmm . I thought , is HP is getting sneaky because they keep telling me it is not an approved cartridge & they have until recently bombarded me with what was supposed to be blocked pop-ups telling me as well.

 So we went on line and got cheaper than PC World genuine HP replacement cartridges  .
 They didn't work much past the month of Alison inserting them.  It was only when we checked the unopened ones that we found that the use by date had passed about eight months ago . Ahhhh ,  beloved eBay purchases

Again it's crossed my mind " Has HP started , " Out of date carts , so out of print quality " by using remote access via accounts with MS  / Google etc etc to , " Adjust your printer settings " .  It could also be the cartridges were so much out of date the inks just died but it's never happened to me before .

In the end we paid £ 109  ( $130 ish ) for two full sets of cartridges from PC World  & suddenly everything is perfect .

 We said to the counter staff , " The inks cost more than the printers these days  .

 It was exactly the same with my two Brother CP 15 laser printers , suddenly they wouldn't print well .. I found out that they were supposedly so old ( six years ) that they were no longer supported by HP & so crashed as if by magic ..both on the same day .       I don't believe in coincidences

Plantoid, there is no reason why toner cartridges should not last a very long time, unlike ink cartridges that can dry up.

I used to have an HP 6L Black printer and the cartridges used to last me three years.

It is such a rat race in their world so I do not trust them either.  My computer is telling me that my colors have run out, that was six months ago.

Mrs TD does a lot of scrapbooking and goes through a ton of colored inks on her inkjet printer. In fact she also wears out printers. She tried clone inkjet cartridges but did not like them so it's back to the OEM expensive ones.

On the other hand I have never had a problem with clone black toner cartridges for any of the laser printers that I have owned.

Here is an option for folks that use a lot of ink. Now I have not used this printer but it sounds like it should work.

Epson EcoTank