The other day, a photocopier engineer told me that laser printers that
use a closed cartridge system, use the same amount of toner each print
regardless of whether you are printing a single full stop, or a full
page of text.

Apparently they always transfer the same quantity from the toner bin
to the waste bin whatever the density of the print.

Can anyone confirm this?
Ron(UK)

Not likely. Most cartridges are spec'd as so many pages of 3%
coverage. If they worked as that guy said, you'd only get 3% of the
pages before it ran out of toner.

He may have been misled by those cartridges having a magnetized toner
pickup rod. One look at those and it *seems* like that's what's going
on.

That is not true! The printer uses toner according to the amount of total
print density on the page. You can run 10,000 pages through the printer, and
if there is not one letter printed, the only thing that will wear out are
the rollers from pushing the paper. Only stray particles of toner will leave
the cartridge to the paper, but this would not normally be visible.

The calculation of the amount of pages that can be printed are based on an
average of 15% print density of the total area of an 8" X 11" paper.
Printing backgrounds or photos as like in pictures, and printing web pages
will decrease the rated amount of prints from the toner cartridge, as
calculated for standard text pages.



--

JANA
_____


"Ron(UK)" wrote in message
...
The other day, a photocopier engineer told me that laser printers that
use a closed cartridge system, use the same amount of toner each print
regardless of whether you are printing a single full stop, or a full
page of text.

Apparently they always transfer the same quantity from the toner bin
to the waste bin whatever the density of the print.

Can anyone confirm this?
Ron(UK)

wrote:
Not likely. Most cartridges are spec'd as so many pages of 3%
coverage. If they worked as that guy said, you'd only get 3% of the
pages before it ran out of toner.

He may have been misled by those cartridges having a magnetized toner
pickup rod. One look at those and it *seems* like that's what's going
on.


Well that`s what I thought, another thing is how would they get
adjustable densities of toner/ toner save etc. They do seem to waste
more toner than they use tho.

Ron

Ron(UK) spake thus:

wrote:

Not likely. Most cartridges are spec'd as so many pages of 3%
coverage. If they worked as that guy said, you'd only get 3% of the
pages before it ran out of toner.

He may have been misled by those cartridges having a magnetized toner
pickup rod. One look at those and it *seems* like that's what's going
on.

Well that`s what I thought, another thing is how would they get
adjustable densities of toner/ toner save etc. They do seem to waste
more toner than they use tho.

Not really.

Case in point: my HP LaserJet 2100, which I've had for more than 5 years
now. I use it fairly regularly, though not heavily. I'm still on the
original cartridge.

Laser printers (and their cousins, toner-based photocopiers) all have
recovery mechanisms which are designed to get the toner that doesn't
stick to the copy back into the reservoir. Otherwise, they'd blast
through toner like a Republican administration's military spending.


--
The only reason corrupt Republicans rule the roost in Washington
is because the corrupt Democrats can't muster any viable opposition.