CHRIS@UKCC.BITNET ("Corman, Chris") (10/18/86)
After reading your note regarding the company in California
which refills toner cartridges, I thought you might be interested
in what we're doing at the University of Kentucky. We purchase
refill bottles of toner from a supplier in Massachusetts and
refill the cartridges here at UKCC. Do you know if toner is
available in colors other than black?
I am attaching part of a report which I prepared on the subject
of recharging toner cartridges. Let me know if you know of
other suppliers; will tonertex sell bottles of toner refill?
Here's the report:
September 18, 1986
To: Anyone who might be interested
From: Chris Corman CHRIS@UKCC.Bitnet
University of Kentucky Computing Center
During the past two months, we have recharged 25 LaserWriter
toner cartridges. In the past, we had either purchased new
cartridges, sent away the old ones to be recharged, or traded them
in for new ones. We can save a lot of money by recharging the
cartridges ourselves.
We can purchase new cartridges from Lexington Computer Store for
$74.25 each. A new cartridge provides very good print quality and comes
sealed, so it has a shelf life of about two years, according to a
label on the box.
We probably should always keep a few new cartidges in stock, in order
to assure that we can have the excellent print quality of a new
cartridge.
When we sent away our old cartridges to be recharged, we had
to pay $40 plus the old, usable cartridge. Or, we were able
to swap 5 used cartridges for 1 recharged one. While these
alternatives were less expensive than buying new cartridges,
we save even more money by refilling at UKCC.
Refilling the cartridges ourselves involves purchasing toner
refills and new cleaning pads from PCC Laser Printer Products.
It costs us about $17 for supplies to refill each toner cartridge,
in addition to the time it takes, which is about 30 minutes per
cartridge. When disassembling the cartridge, the refiller must
be careful not to damage its components.
The drum is very delicate and must be treated with care; it is
light sensitive and must be kept in a shaded area when it is out
of its housing. Exposing it to bright light for too long will
cause it to print lightly.
Also, care must be taken not to scratch the surface of the drum;
a scratch will show up on every page printed as a blotch of toner.
We normally get about 7,000 pages from a new or a recharged
cartridge. Some of the cartridges have been recharged twice and
the print quality is still acceptable, but the drum apparently
begins to deteriorate after the second recharge and the print
isn't quite as sharp and dark as we prefer. For some reason,
some of the cartridges begin printing lightly after only one
recharge. If we decide to have one or more printers for making
only draft copies, we can use cartridges with problems in these
printers and keep the best cartridges to use in printers
reserved for final copies. Some recharged cartridges cause a
streak to be printed on the output, usually down the right side
of the page; I haven't been able to determine
the cause of this problem. These cartridges are also acceptable
for draft copies.
Recharged cartridges have a limited shelf life because we are
unable to reseal them to keep the toner from getting lumpy.
Apparently, cartridges which aren't used frequently yield fewer
copies. The LaserWriters in Room 111 seem to produce far more
pages per cartridge than the ones in the Micro Lab,
Publications Office, and the Main Office.
We only keep about 6 recharged cartridges in supply at
a time, in order to get as many good copies as possible
from each cartridge.
We now have 4 old cartridges which are unusable because
they have some defective component; I have been able to
salvage some parts from these to use in other cartridges
and have already made one good cartridge from two defective
ones.
In summary, we save almost $60 each time we refill
a cartridge, so we need to establish a procedure for recharging,
ordering supplies, and maintaining the best possible print
quality.
The company's name and address is:
Bruce McDonald
Laser Printer Products
11 Freeman St.
Stoughton, MA 02072
Ph. 617-341-3005SCHMIDT@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (Christopher Schmidt) (10/24/86)
Bell Atlantic Business Supplies (800) 523 0552 sells brown LaserJet cartridges for $139. I've never dealt with them. They also sell a legal paper tray for $49, which we will order. --Christopher -------