Archive for the ‘refill toner’ Category

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.

Some asked me if it was possible to refill the Samsung CLP315 Toner Cartridge. Unfortunately it is not possible currently purely because Samsung want you to buy or refurbish their own cartridges.

So those proud owners of the very good Samsung printer the CLP 315 will have to buy new cartridges each time they are out of ink.

The reason the Samsung CLP315 cannot be easily refilled with new toner, is quite simple. The cartridge is perfect usable, it’s internal mechanisms are fine, in fact they are fine for many thousands of more prints with a little ink. All the blades, rollers will be working correctly, there is only one thing besides the lack of ink that is stopping this nice little Samsung CLP printer being refilled – that’s because Samsung have made it so.

Samsung CLP315 Refilled or not ?

Nope, not currently, you see Samsung have put a little computer chip on the side of their toner cartridges. This little chip stops the cartridge functioning, yep in these days of eco awareness, companies are actually putting in self destruct mechanisms to stop it working. Imagine how you’d feel if your perfectly good Television set shut itself down after watching 2000 hours of television – well that’s what is happening with these cartridges.

Forget about the recycling schemes, forget about the packages with green trees all over them to send your cartridge back. The Samsung CLP315 and similar printers in their range have an encrypted chip on the side of them so you can’t refill or reuse them. The printers used to have an ordinary computer chip but recycling companies produced copies meaning you could reuse the cartridges and refill them.

Pretty bad huh – but they are not alone, printer firms are all adding these killer chips to stop you taking the green option (or should I say the less profitable option). So sorry no you can’t refill the Samsung CLP315 toner cartridge.

Shame on you Samsung !!! (even if you did make my wonderful laptop)