subject: Toner Cartridges – Facts From Fiction! [print this page] It is inevitable that with so many ranges of printer cartridges available both in the high street but increasingly populating online, all manner of urban myths about OEM, refill and compatible toner cartridges have arisen.
It makes good sense to obtain a few basic points of information when next buying toner cartridges.
The first piece of fiction is that using refill or compatible cartridges will invalidate your printer warranty. The facts are that under EU trading legislation, it is illegal for any manufacturer, whether they're global brands like Brother, HP, Dell, Canon, Lexmark, Epson or a lesser well-known make, to take this action. However, today, with the low cost of replacing a printer, it is simply quicker and easier to purchase from new rather than return a faulty unit for repair.
Indeed, a compatible laser toner cartridge does not make any significant contact with any part of the body of the printer itself other than the slight natural toner loss during the printing process.
Looking at what happens during the turnaround, it is important to distinguish between the basic drill and fill' type outfits, which ultimately produces substandard cartridge performance and the professional industry suppliers.
Recognised brands will replace all worn and damaged components, which are then cleaned and tested to near original equipment manufacturer's (OEM's) specifications to give comparable quality of print performance.
Toner cannot be reused! Once the toner leaves the cartridge and is applied to the page by a series of positive and negative electrical charges to transfer the toner to the paper it is contaminated by particles from the immediate environment.
Refill or compatible cartridges today use almost identical fine particle, chemical toner technology, which delivers to the required standard of accurate printing. Any slight differences may be detected when printing at high resolution.
An interesting fact is that just 20% of toner cartridges are actually reused across the entire market! Research has found that an OEM prefers to recycle only part of the materials towards new cartridges, whilst a compatible cartridge supplier will almost always re-use cartridges just the once, which suggests a greater environmental impact.
