There have been BILLIONS of $$$ invested in research and development for the cartridge recycling industry. So why doesn't the industry have an overall better track record? The answer is quite simple: Almost every company out there tries to maximize their profits on recycled cartridges by cutting costs somewhere in the remanufacturing process.

There is no industry "Watch Dog" that any company has to answer to when refurbishing toner cartridges. Each company takes a different approach, "does their own thing" and replaces components as they see fit. This creates a wide variety of quality levels and higher failure rates in the marketplace. ONLY BUY toner cartridges that are "completely gutted" and precisely remanufactured to OEM SPECIFICATIONS. This means EVERY PART that affects cartridge performance is REPLACED NEW or stripped and resurfaced in a state-of-the-art facility.

OEM manufacturers design their cartridges to JUST BARELY make it to the end of their cycle. HP and other companies have it down to an exact science how many revolutions, prints, and electrical charges each component in a cartridge will take before it dies. You can be absolutely sure they don't make it EASY or CHEAP to recycle it by giving you long life components you can re-use!

A toner cartridge consists of many vital components, all of which can affect cartridge performance if they are reused. Here are some examples:

• drum (50-60% failure),
• mag roller (25-40% failure),
• primary charge roller (15-20% failure if not cleaned properly),
• wiper blade (5-10% failure),
• recovery blade (2-5% failure),
• mag roller bushings (2-5% failure),
• mag roller felts (50-75% failure-makes inside of machine dirtier),
• toner retaining blades (2-5% failure),
• toner hopper seal (10-15% messy cartridges out of box if not installed).

A few components can be re-used once or twice, but all of them are known to fail at some point in the first cycle or two after being remanufactured. (The average recharger reuses every component except the drum 3 TIMES!) The ONLY WAY to have an OEM QUALITY toner cartridge is to SPEND THE MOST MONEY ON PARTS and restore each individual component to its factory condition! If you are currently using recharged cartridges, ask your supplier how many of these vital components are being replaced and how many recycles they perform before replacing each of these components. Precious few can or will ever give you a straight answer!

If you can afford to have your printer down for a week, or you only buy one toner cartridge per year, we will not try to stop you from saving $10 on a cheaper reman or buying a messy toner refill kit. HOWEVER, If you rely heavily on your printers, and you want "Install it & Forget It" OEM reliability, quality, and performance, THAT is what WE DELIVER! With almost a decade of experience we commit to you this item will deliver the best toner value over the long term!

The following was written by a recharger years ago and will be forever relevant, more so now with the advent of complex chips and counters.

There are many companies on the internet selling cartridge refill kits these days. They say you can save or even make a lot of money, but it is only IF IT WORKS EVERY TIME and you look ONLY at the short term! It is the sloppy "drill & fill" approach to cartridge recycling and all the "do-it-yourselfers" trying to make a quick buck that have soured many people to recycled printer cartridges since the beginning. On the surface it sounds very simple to unscrew a few things, drill a hole, or pull a plug and pour in some toner. Several years ago when we were new in the business we believed that's all there was to it too, but we quickly discovered THE REAL FACTS!

There are many issues and problems you could experience in
doing your own cartridges or buying from unproven sources:

Toner Quality - Toner is extremely difficult to manufacture, in fact there are only a handful of toner plants in the entire world capable of producing toner that delivers OEM performance. There are dozens that simply don't measure up. We have tested toner from most major manufacturers over the years and have determined which ones consistently deliver top quality performance. We have experienced many disappointments when trying less expensive brands, such as expensive repairs from toner buildup on the fuser, drum contamination, unacceptable graphics capabilities, or just dirty prints. You can be assured we pay premium prices for our toner and pass the quality on to you along with very competitive prices! With imaging supplies the "cheap stuff" always costs more in the long run.

Fuser Buildup - This is probably one of the most serious problems because you don't see it right away. One of the major toner vendors in the U.S. sells toner for about 1/2 the price of everyone else. It produces extremely black graphics and very shiny glossy beautiful looking prints. We used this toner for a few months and then we began having a rash of service calls to replace customers fusers. We even had one printer with a brand new fuser go bad in 2,000 prints. Based upon the price some of these kits are going for, BEWARE it just might be the toner from a vendor on our BLACKLIST!!

Drum & Rollers - All imaging takes place by the use of rollers. The vast majority of toner cartridges contain a drum and one or more rollers that must be cleaned or replaced every cycle to maintain image quality. This always requires disassembly of the cartridge, special solvents & cloths, and either high powered micron filter vacuums or compressed air.

Blades - All toner is held back from dumping into your machine by the use of various types of blades that ride against these rollers. Blades also accomplish toner distribution across the developing roller allowing a precise layer to be presented to the drum for image development. These blades normally must be either cleaned or replaced every time the cartridge is refilled to avoid image problems.

Leaks - These usually develop around the plug, the blades, or the ends of rollers, and will never stop pouring once they start. Toner is an airborne solid; in other words there is a "cloud" of toner inside the toner chamber when your machine is running. If there is the slightest leak anywhere, it will continue to pour a microscopic stream into your machine throughout the cycle of the cartridge. We take many steps to insure that will not be a problem with our cartridges.

Waste Toner - Toner is an electrostatically transmitted substance and does not transfer 100% to the paper, leaving behind a residue that must be collected somewhere. On some cartridges waste toner is collected in a plastic box located somewhere on the outside of the cartridge. On others it is stored in a chamber inside the cartridge or even mixed back into the good toner! Emptying waste toner should be done every cycle but is not fun. It's as fine as cigarette smoke and will travel 50 feet or more throughout your house, business, etc. It creates a nasty cloud when you try to dump it and cannot effectively be vacuumed unless you have a special filter that will trap particles down to .03 microns. It is a somewhat sticky substance requiring special cloths to properly wipe up spills and it sometimes even solidifies in the waste chamber requiring much effort to remove! Your cartridge can fail as early as 10% into the cycle if this step is not performed.

Stale Toner - Similar to waste toner except that you usually can't get to it! A toner cartridge never fully empties, leaving behind approximately 3-5% of its contents in a "worn out" state. As professional remanufacturers we remove this old toner by disassembling the cartridge and thoroughly purging all the old residues. This is accomplished by 210 mph vacuums, toner cloths, and compressed air, a daunting project to carry out in your home or business. This step most likely will not be in the instructions for the do-it-yourselfer.

Developer - In many cartridges there are hard iron particles used as a medium of toner transfer. These particles must be maintained at precise levels for optimum image quality. Too much developer will either ruin your drum or dump into your machine, too little will produce white spots in your prints, streaking, or gray backgrounding. There is no practical way to measure this for the do-it-yourselfer and replacing developer is difficult without proper equipment, take our word for it, ALL old developer must be removed from the roller before refilling. We will spend 5-10 minutes with a high powered vacuum on this step alone. Most Sharp & Xerox cartridges use this system and you will experience early cartridge failure without replacing this vital component.

Time & Workspace - You are most likely a professional at what you do and it took you awhile to get good at it. Likewise we have spent years perfecting our production system and toner containment facilities. The "time" the "Do-It-Yourself refill companies" advertise is only the amount of time it takes to pour the toner into the cartridge once you have your workspace set up and the cartridge prepared for refilling. It takes at least one hour to properly set up and tear down a toner work area plus refill your cartridge and it should be surrounded with curtains from ceiling to floor. We give you fair warning if you drop your open bottle of toner on the floor, or knock it over on the table it can squirt everywhere much like a fire extinguisher does. 200 grams of toner can turn everything within a 10' radius completely black and is very difficult to clean up. We've regularly had bottles of toner explode when we opened them and make huge messes. Toner highly irritates the respiratory system, skin, eyes, and can permanently stain clothing. Our production crew wears latex gloves, smocks, micron particle masks, and uses special toner cloths in order to do this work. Unless you are spending $100's each month on toner cartridges, you will truly be hard pressed to realize any savings with do-it-yourself refill kits assuming you received good quality toner to begin with.

Very quickly we discovered all the PROBLEMS with this approach which simply cannot be ignored and we had to get serious about the technical issues with recycling printer cartridges in order to keep our customers happy. This item is a complicated electrostatic device and was originally manufactured in a multi-million dollar state-of-the-art facility. It cannot be restored to its original state in your garage without a serious investment of time and equipment.

Inks & Inkjet/Bubblejet refills: We initially spent several months very diligently at inkjet remanufacturing in our beginning. The owner got in to this business trying to save money on his own inkjet and laser printer refills. We found it is actually more difficult to get an inkjet refill to work than a toner refill. In addition to all the principles laid out in the toner section there is even more to consider with inkjets:

1. Ink STAINS permanently!! If you get a toner spill on carpet or clothing, you can vacuum it up, shampoo your rug, or throw clothing in the washer. However if you spill ink, you will most always have a permanent stain wherever it lands even on solid surfaces.

2. Printhead cartridges are always CLOGGED with some dried out ink residue left over from the first cycle. Inkjets work by superheating the ink at 350+ degrees which explodes it out the printhead onto the paper. Just think of boiling a pan of water dry on your stove and then trying to simply rinse the minerals out. It doesn't just dissolve and rinse out with more water, you have to scrub it clean or use lime away!! $1000's of special equipment and solutions are required to even begin to get at this stuff in a microscopic inkjet chamber.

Inkjet, bubblejet, and ink tank cartridges fall into 3 categories:

3. The worst group has sponges that are extremely difficult to get ink to flow through. They are designed to allow the ink to flow very slowly, so when you try to squirt ink in a couple minutes, it just puddles and comes out on top- very frustrating.

4. Another group operates with a pressure chamber or a vacuum bladder. This is done to offset gravity so the ink doesn't just pour out the printhead into the printer when you aren't using it. When you puncture the cartridge to install new ink, you immediately deplete the offsetting pressure which must be restored in order for the cartridge to work properly. It is almost impossible to get it right manually, which means either the ink doesn't come out at all or it just pours out into the printer and all over the paper.

5. The final group contains primarily ink tanks and are either sonically sealed or have a special tape system with an air tunnel maze on top of the cartridge. When you drill through this, puncture it, or remove the tape it is almost impossible to get an air tight seal or replace the tape in such a way as the ink can flow properly. If there is not enough air the ink will not come out the printhead, if there is too much flow then it just drains into the printer. Also the issue exists with headspace, people always put too much ink into the cartridge which means all that excess ink has to drain out until a proper headspace is achieved in the ink chamber and the pressure is equalized. If you have ever put a 5 gallon bottle on a water cooler you know that the first few cups of water come gushing out until the suction forms within the bottle. The exact same thing happens inside this style of inkjet. Just as the water cooler has a gurgling system for allowing air into the upside down bottle to let the water out, a much more precise version of this happens inside the ink cartridge.

Still want to refill your own inkjets? GO FOR IT! Press CTRL+D to bookmark our website address, we are confident you'll be looking for the "already to use" cartridges SOON!