Magnetic Ink?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Clark Wilhelm Griswold, Jr.
  • Start date Start date
C

Clark Wilhelm Griswold, Jr.

One of the pieces of spam in my mailbox today mentioned selling "magnetic ink"
for use in printing the MICR line on blank check stock. Since I have a policy of
immediately deleting spam, I obviously did not go to this person's web site.

I am curious though. The inability of most banks to read non-magnetic coding put
a quick end to my experimentation with printing my own checks. Has someone
developed black ink with fine enough particles so as not to plug an ink jet
cart, or was this guy blowing smoke?
 
Clark Wilhelm Griswold said:
Interesting. May have to try a cart to see how well it works.....
Click to expand...

Upon a little further research in my trash folder, I notice that these are the
same G7 clowns that have been sending spam for ages. Won't reward them for that.
 
Most banks i believe nowadays use optical scanning of the coding.
Click to expand...

Actually, that isn't true. While some its common at some banks & regions,
magnetic readers are much faster and less susceptible to scanning errors.

Furthermore, even if your bank does do optical scanning the problem is that you
can't guarantee that the receving bank will, and they are the ones that code the
check.
 
Clark said:
One of the pieces of spam in my mailbox today mentioned selling
"magnetic ink" for use in printing the MICR line on blank check
stock. Since I have a policy of immediately deleting spam, I
obviously did not go to this person's web site.

I am curious though. The inability of most banks to read
non-magnetic coding put a quick end to my experimentation with
printing my own checks. Has someone developed black ink with fine
enough particles so as not to plug an ink jet cart, or was this guy
blowing smoke?
Click to expand...

Are you asking if there is such a thing as a MICR ink cartridge? The
answer is yes. If you are asking if there is MICR ink for an inkjet
printer, yes. Here is the first site I came upon, there may be
others. (Don't know whether this was your spammer's site).

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z66616015
 
Clark Wilhelm Griswold said:
One of the pieces of spam in my mailbox today mentioned selling "magnetic ink"
for use in printing the MICR line on blank check stock. Since I have a policy of
immediately deleting spam, I obviously did not go to this person's web site.

I am curious though. The inability of most banks to read non-magnetic coding put
a quick end to my experimentation with printing my own checks. Has someone
developed black ink with fine enough particles so as not to plug an ink jet
cart, or was this guy blowing smoke?
Click to expand...

Magnetic ink for lasers is readily available and has been for years.
Any good rebuilder of toner cartridges will have these available.
Regards
Lee
 
John Pollard said:
Are you asking if there is such a thing as a MICR ink cartridge? The
answer is yes. If you are asking if there is MICR ink for an inkjet
printer, yes. Here is the first site I came upon, there may be
others. (Don't know whether this was your spammer's site).
Click to expand...



I know they have made MICR laser carts for a long time. Was surprised to see
them selling such an item as a MICR ink jet cartridge. The only way you can make
magnetic ink, at least economically, is to incorporate iron filings. Just having
a hard time believing the can do that without plugging up the jets.

Since the place selling these is a known major spammer, I'm highly suspect that
this is anything other than a private label cart with regular black ink.
 
Lee Babcock said:
Magnetic ink for lasers is readily available and has been for years.
Any good rebuilder of toner cartridges will have these available.
Click to expand...

True. But that isn't ink, it's toner. Since toner consists of finely ground
polymers (among other things), it would be easy to incorporate some fine iron
dust in the blend.
 
Clark said:
I know they have made MICR laser carts for a long time. Was
surprised to see them selling such an item as a MICR ink jet
cartridge. The only way you can make magnetic ink, at least
economically, is to incorporate iron filings. Just having a hard
time believing the can do that without plugging up the jets.

Since the place selling these is a known major spammer, I'm highly
suspect that this is anything other than a private label cart with
regular black ink.
Click to expand...

You may well be right, I have no personal experience with them. I
sure don't like spammers, but I'm not sure I'd assume they were
necessarily all frauds.

I was curious enough to call HP; they currently do not sell such a
product and they do not support such a product, and if that product
screwed up your printer, the warranty would be void. Of course, if HP
is hoping to sell such a product themselves one day, they probably
would not be rushing to support it from another company.
 
I printed up my own cheques one time when I ran out and needed some. It
just takes longer to clear because they get rejected by the auto reader and
need to be keyed by hand. So if you want more time on clearing...... :-)
 
Gary said:
And when I got the cheques back they had the same micr keying on a small
slip of paper taped to the bottom of my cheques.
Click to expand...

Right. That indicates the bank had to manually re-encode your check because
their magnetic readers couldn't read it. Too many of those and some banks will
start charging a hefty per check fee for that... YMMV
 
With MICR printing of checks, the material used in the toner beside the
normal polymer materials is magnetite in very controlled amounts. There is
a special MICR font required called E13B which is the one that makes the
almost numbers at the bottom of your checks. That is the line that is read
and verified for bank usage. When people create checks from home
applications, that line is already completed on the check stock you get.
The Inkjet printers usually put in the name, amount etc.
The positioning on the MICR line is very precise as well as the required
"ClearSpace" around the E13B line -

Bob
 
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