Now I know despite being hugely ripped of for replacement cartridges, many people feel a little unsure about refilling their toner, so I thought I’d post a little refill toner review. Now the method will vary slightly depending on the printer cartridge your going to refill but essentially the vast majority now focus on one distinct method.

This method is the ‘make a hole’ and ‘pour’ method. Now if you are really lucky on the side of your cartridge their may be a little stopper that can be opened. If you have you’re in luck as all you have to do is open the stopper and pour in some replacement toner ink. Difficult huh ! Most cartridges used to have these little refill plugs but the printer companies now have helpfully replaced them as they realised they can make loads more money by selling you new ones or refurbishing your existing cartridges (the annoying thing is they pretend to be eco-friendly by doing this!).

If the printer companies put back these little stoppers it would have a huge environmental benefit, people could refill toner in their cartridges with no effort at all. Unfortunately I don’t think this is likely unless they are forced by legislation. The reality is most of us will be faced with the problem of the cartridge being sealed so will have to find a way of opening the cartridge.

Refill Toner Review – Some Steps

So let’s first start by looking at the tools needed, you can either put these together yourself or the companies who supply refill toners will sell you one. The picture here contains the standard items in kit, which is all you’ll need on most cartridges, they’re not expensive I think I paid about $14 for my first toner refill kit.

Typical Toner Refilling Kit

Review Toner refill Kit

You can see from the kit, there’s some gloves, stoppers, pincers, plugs and a soldering iron. The most important item is probably the soldering iron with a little adapter. To use this you simply let it heat up and touch the side of the toner cartridge. A little hole will be created and you use this to pour the replacement toner into the cartridge.

You can then use the stopper to reseal the hole and make a nice neat job, and that’s basically it. No really for many printer cartridges that is all you need to do. It takes a few minutes and provided you don’t pour the toner all over your shoes instead of the cartridge and use quality compatible toner your toner cartridge will be as good as new.
I’d like to say it takes great skill but actually it doesn’t – it can’t do I have done it on many occasions.

I’d like to say a little word in my mini toner refill review about the replacement ink. This is probably the most important part of refilling the cartridge, if you fill it with rubbish then you will get poor results. Fortunately most of the companies I’ve used all provide top quality ink which is exactly the same as the toner you will get in the original cartridges.

Compatible Ink

Toner Refill Bottle

When you shake the toner bottle, the ink is so fine that it behaves like liquid. This makes it very easy to pour into the hole you have created, obviously be sensible and don’t do this over your beige lounge carpet though! Most of the bottles are supplied with a pouring nozzle like this one in the image, it really is a very simple job to refill toner.

Once you’ve poured the toner in, then you just have to use one of the stoppers in the kit to seal the unit. It’s nothing fancy as long as the toner doesn’t leak through the hole you should be fine. Don’t worry if you don’t have any stoppers, you can use strong packing tape just as well, it doesn’t look as neat but works fine.

Here’s one that has been completed and ready to go back into your printer. So I urge you to give it a go, you will be making a big difference to your pocket and also it’s saving new cartridges being produced (takes about 2 litres of oil to produce each one) plus the old one going to landfill.

Example Toner stopper

You can often refill your cartridges many times and you’ll save a small fortune on replacement toner. The cartridges are all self contained so there’s no risk to your printer and if you buy quality ink you’ll not notice any reduction in quality of your printing either.

Many schools and businesses refill their cartridges routinely and literally save thousands every year, the savings do add up. I hope my brief toner refill review has given you the impetus to give it a go, it really is simple and the savings can be considerable! Here’s the company I use if you want a recommendation – Toner Topup

So can you refill toner in the HP 2600?   Hewlett Packard printers used to be some of the easiest printers to refill anywhere, which was good news for companies who had the sturdy laserjet models printing all day.

Toner refill for HP2600

But alas of course HP realised that huge profits were being wasted by allowing people to refill these cartridges easily, sure it’s the green thing to do and reduces the environmental impact but that doesn’t mean much to the shareholders !

So the usual trick of adding a little chip to the cartridges happened, the HP 2600 had a little killer chip fitted to the toner cartridge to stop you refilling.  Imagine it’s like a car company fitting a device that stopped your car working after 50,000 miles so that you had to get a new one.  Incredible that this practice is even allowed as frankly it’s disgusting faced with the environmental issues of the world.

So Refill Toner HP 2600 – YES or NO

Well yes fortunately it is still quite simple, if you want to refill the HP 2600 cartridge you can buy little kits that allow you to refill it.  These usually have a little tool for creating a refiller hole, a little stopper and a small chip to replace the one HP puts on the HP 2600 cartridge.

It takes a few minutes to do, no real skill involved and if you buy a kit with proper compatible toner , no difference in print quality.  You can actually do without the chip on certain models as the chip can be overridden but check with the experts for that.

Not sure  how much the cost of new toner cartridges for the HP 2600 but refilling should save you between 50 and 80% of the cost each time you refill.  Remember though refilling your toner is simply replacing the ink, if the cartridge doesn’t work too well or there are printing problems – you’ll still have them after refill toner HP 2600, so buy a new cartridge in that case.

A question that is often asked, can you refill laser printer cartridges.  Now you’ll get different answers from whoever you ask, ask a printer company or someone who sells laser cartridges and you’ll get lots of answers.  There will be talk of voiding warranties, damage to printers and poor quality – all of which are simply not true.

To start on the warranty void, In Europe and in US you are not allowed to make the condition of warranty dependent on purchasing specific (i.e. their) toner cartridges.  Mind you when you start looking at the exorbitant cost of some branded laser cartidges it becomes fairly irrelevant – it is not uncommon for the cost of a replacement set of toner cartridges to be well in excess of the cost of the printer.

But is damage to the printer possible, if you have a look at any printer cartridge for a laser printer you’ll notice that it is fairly self contained.  The unit contains all its own internal mechanisms, think logically how could that actually damage the inside of your printer.  The main risk is inserting the cartridge in incorrectly, a danger that could happen with a brand new cartridge

Most laser printer cartridges refill kits don’t touch any of the working mechanisms, they simply refill the ink in the cartridge.  Of course the printer companies have made this more difficult on purpose – by removing the refiller tab, and appallingly placing a chip on the cartridge so you can’t reuse it.  But fortunately most laser printer cartridges can still be refilled relatively easily.

So can you Refill Laser Printer Toner Cartridges

The simple answer is yes,occasionally there are technical issue with a few cartridges so it’s always best to ask and expert and get a specific guide to refilling your particular toner cartridge.  But in general it’s fairly simple,

1. make hole in cartridge
2. refill toner through hole
3. put stopper in to seal cartridge
4. replace computer chip if required
5. carry on printing

It sounds simplistic but for most cartridges, that’s all there is to it.  You are stopping the totally unnecessary production of a new cartridge – and the associated carbon cost, saving the landfill of the old cartridge.  Plus you also will generally save between 40 and 85% of the cost of buying new cartridges – savings that are potentially hundred of dollars.

It takes a little effort, sure but if you buy a kit, it’s very simple to do and only takes a few minutes.  Of course I’ve missed out one element in the question of refilling laser cartidges.  Is the print quality as good, as long as you buy the correct compatible toner – there will be no difference.   When the other components in your laser cartridge start to fail then you will begin to see an affect on the quality but then it’s time to buy a new cartridge hopefully by then you’ll have refilled that cartridge several times and saved yourself a small fortune.

Here’s the company I recommend for Europe and UK (they do USA but you have to watch the shipping costs obviously)   – Toner Topup

They have a product selector which you can check to see what is involved with refilling your laser printer cartridge.

I used to think my Lexmark C530 was a fantastic printer, the colours were superb, the printing fast and quiet, but my opinion has now changed because of the cost of the Lexmark C530 toner.

Many people buy a laser printer because they think it is the economical choice when you are doing a lot of printing, however my experience of this printer was entirely the opposite.   the costs to keep this printer running were simply ridiculous, particularly if you used Lexmark C530 Cartridges.

If you’ve found yourself in the unfortunate position of checking out prices for replacement cartridges for the Lexmark C530 then let me give you some advice.  Manufacturers like Lexmark deliberately discount the cost of their printers for one reason, they make much more money on charging you a fortune each time it runs out of ink.

When the Lexmark C530 runs out of toner you are expected to return it in some Pseudo Green Recycling scheme, when in reality the green option is just refilling it with replacement toner.  Not they’d ever admit this of course, even the bags you return your old cartridge are covered in pictures of trees to reinforce their point.

Well do yourself and the environment a favour, save some serious money and just refill the toner inside your old C530 cartridge.

Refill Lexmark C530 Toner

So it is hard to replace the toner in a Lexmark C530 cartridge, well to be honest it is actually very easy. First time you do it, it might take 15 minutes to be careful but it really is a very quick job.

So what’s actually involved?

Well I bought a kit from Toner Topup to refill my cartridge. I checked on their printer selector tool and I got a kit specifically for refilling the Lexmark C530 including compatible toner. The kit included a little soldering iron with a special end which creates a hole in the cartridge, a little plug to seal the whole and a set of colour toners.

All you do is make a little hole in the cartridge with the soldering iron tool, shake the replacement toner and refill the cartridge. A spare stopper then seals the toner cartridge and you’ve finished.

I’d never used a soldering iron in my life and it was extremely easy just touch it to the side of the cartridge and push gently – ermm that’s it. there’s really nothing too it, the toner ink refill is like liquid and easy to pour, although I reckon it would make a mess if you spilt it. It took me a little over 30 minutes to replace the toner in all the cartridges, that was being very careful.

The amount of money I saved by refilling my Lexmark C530 Toner, rather than buy new cartridges was over $300 (yes you read right), mind you the huge saving was mainly due to the huge price of the replacements. It might have fallen now as the printer is a couple of years old and the prices have fallen slightly I believe.  

the environmental benefit is not insignificant either, I refilled one toner cartridge four times, before getting a new one, and that’s saved lots of new cartridges being produced and old ones ending up in landfill or being remanufactured. If you need to replace your Lexmark C530 Toner – try and refill it makes sense in every way.

By the way you’ll often hear horrible reasons why you shouldn’t do this. they’ll always be from someone with an interest in you buying a new toner cartridge instead of refilling.

Here’s a few -

• You’ll damage your printer – the cartridge is a self contained unit, how could it damage the printer. Mind you in my case – I could have bought a new Lexmark C530 with the savings from replacing one set of cartridges !
• You’ll void your warranty – rumours of voiding manufacturers warranty by not using their cartridges are false. This is illegal in USA and UK and most of Europe
• The Print Quality will be worse – it is true that eventually the quality of the printout will begin to worsen as other parts of the cartridge fail. But often you can refill the cartridge many times before this happens, and then you just get a new one!

It’s not just the Lexmark C530 toner that can be refilled, almost all modern printers can with a little effort in exchange for huge savings both monetary and environmentally ! try it , you won’t regret it.

Now despite what my children and spouse may think I am not a cheapskate. But please tell me if I’m the only one who think the cost of toner cartridges for the Samsung CLP-600 is somewhat extreme. Who can honestly blame me if I look around for alternatives to find out if the Samsung CLP600 Toner can be refilled for example.

Samsung CLP600 - a Nice inexpensive printer

I mean when you buy a printer and it runs out of ink, you don’t expect to pay 2-3 times the cost to replace the CLP600 toner cartridges do you ? Well I don’t, but that is the rather sad truth, in UK money pay £180 for this printer then expect the bill to be over £400 to replace all the toner cartridges. The printer won’t be the only thing spluttering, so can it be refilled ?

Samsung CLP600 Toner Refill or not ?

Yes you can thanks goodness, or I for one would give the printer away! However thanks to the those lovely people at Samsung it’s made a little bit more difficult by them putting these little computer chips on the bottom of the clp600 cartridge.

So you need to buy the chips to replace as well, however they are not too expensive if you don’t mind replacing them. Here’s one deal I found which seems pretty reasonable – Samsung CLP600 Refill – when I looked £149 for a full set with instructions, not too bad and about 33% of the cost of a new cartridge set!!!

It’s much better for the environment as well, all that waste of a perfectly good cartridge that just needs some more ink. It does take a little work though but it’s not too difficult at all, refilling all the toner cartridges in your CLP600 doesn’t take long. In my opinion it’s well worth doing but not everyone will be comfortable with the procedure of refilling the Samsung CLP600 Toner Refill.