This forum has been heavily balanced toward inkjet printing, especially
when the area of refill and third party inks are discussed.
Color laser printers are beginning to develop a substantial market, as
the prices drop and technology improves, and their getting faster and
easier to work with.
There are a number of very low priced color laser printers showing up.
I am speaking of $200-300. Most come with partially filled toner
cartridges, and seem to be using the same business model that low end
inkjets do, the manufacturers hoping people will buy the printer and
then be caught into toner cartridge purchase slavery.
In several cases, the cost of replacing the toner cartridges once with
OEM versions costs as much or more than the printer (which usually comes
with partially filled toner cartridges, however).
It's a bad deal for the environment, just like the inkjet printer
situation, but it is worse with the laser printers because they are
substantially more complex and use a lot more resources up to make them.
Laser printers vary considerably in the amount of other consumables
required. Some use toner cartridges with drums for each color, and a
transfer belt, some use fuser oil, and some even need to have the fuser
replaced after certain number of prints. Others only use a set of toner
cartridges, and a one piece image unit that lasts several tens of
thousands of prints before requiring replacement.
Obviously, the manufacturers want you to buy their toner products which
sell for between $40 and $200 per color cartridge. The newer low end
machines use just a toner refill which has no other parts to replace
with the toner unit, so all that's needed is the toner itself.
So, the question that comes to mind is how good are 3rd party toners for
color laser printers? How much savings is there in using 3rd party
toners, and are their many refill services or suppliers for color toners?
I know there are hundreds of black toner types on the market and many
printers require fairly specialized types (due to melting temperature,
or type of transfer technology used). What about color laser printers?
If anyone has personal experience in using 3rd party color toners I'd be
very interested in your experiences.
Art
