Vic Dura said:
Thanks for the info Tony. I did not remove all the remaining toner
from the 1710 cartridge before refilling. However, there wasn't much
left and after printing a couple of hundred pages following the
refill, the printing is still uniformly light.
What is the "developer" that remains in the cartridge? I've never read
anything about "developer" in a laser cartridge.
Vic
So far as i know all laser printers and laser photocopiers use developer, in
some cases the developer is mixed with the toner and in some it is in a
seperate container (more common with photocopiers). Both toner and developer
are essential for the printing process to work.
The issue I was referring to (which may not apply to your printer) is that the
waste toner produced during printing has a higher ratio of developer to toner
than the original toner, if the printer has a waste toner compartment this is
no problem since the waste toner gets thrown away at some stage.
But if the printer does not have a waste toner compartment but puts the waste
toner back into the toner compartment then at some stage the ratio in that
compartment will be too high. This happens in some Brother printers and can
manifest itself as a page with a gray background when the toner cartridge is
nearing empty. That is why removing all unused toner before refilling
cartridges from printers that have no waste toner hopper is essential. It is
also why re-using waste toner is ill-advised.
The quality of most toner available for refilling is very high indeed but there
are some traps. Generic or universal toner may not work well in all of the
printers that the manufacturer claims it is formulated for and in some cases
the supplier may not have done their homework and the toner is not properly
made. Once more this applies to a very small minority of available toners, if
you stick to good brands (like Static Control Corporation as one example of a
quality manufacturer) you will have no problem at all.
The only things that I can think of are either you have got some poor quality
toner or the Toner Save feature has been enabled in the printer driver.
Tony