Guest blogger Jack from the Phillipines

The Canon FC 120 is quite a neat little copier, for most offices and home use that just want a neat little fast copying machine it’s a great choice. It’s not expensive either you can pick one up for a couple of hundred dollars, and possibly less as newer models hit the market.

When you read the marketing information, I see yet again the usual rubbish designed to pretend to the customer that they’re using technology to help the customer and reduce costs. Whereas the reality is that the Canon FC 120 is designed to maximise profits, what do you think ?

Neat Little Copier - Canon FC120

When you are checking through the specifications of this copier, you might read the section about teh innovative new toner cartridges. The marketing pitch goes something like this,

Canon’s unique All-in-One cartridge includes the core copying elements (toner, drum, cleaner unit) making your copier virtually maintenance-free

They are trying to tell you that replacing all the core components of a toner cartridge each time it’s run out of ink, makes it easy to maintain. I guess there is some truth to that, but what it fails to take into account is that this means that the cost of each printer toner cartridges for the Canon FC 120 is significantly more expensive. Each time your copier runs out of ink you are forced to replace not only the toner but the drum and cleaner unit as well and of course this costs.

Two Canon FC 120 Cartridges = New Printer

That’s it buy a couple of FC120 cartridges and you’ll have spent nearly the same money as the cost of the printer. Does technology really need us to be producing such disposable, one use and wasteful products. Is there not a better way of doing this?

Well I’ll tell you there is, this Canon printer cartridge is actually easily refilled. When the toner runs out, the components are fine, they are not so badly manufactured that they can only last one print run !! Most laser toner cartridges are fine for several runs despite what the manufacturers would have you to believe.

The Canon FC120 takes a couple of minutes to refill, of course your not replacing the other components in the cartridge you are simply refilling it. Look for a toner refilling company who will sell you some toner and ideally initially a small kit which makes the process childs play.

Check that they sell specific compatible toner for your Canon FC 120 and not the cheap universal toner that some companies sell. It literally takes a few minutes and each refill will be saving you about 80-90 % of the cost of a new cartridge, that’s potentially hundreds of dollars. Of course the other components in the Toner cartridge will eventually run out and you’ll notice the difference in quality and then it’s time to buy a new cartridge and repeat the process. Just to give you an idea of the savings, the company I use is here and they charge about $13/£9 for a bottle of toner for the FC120, after which it prints perfectly.  There are many good companies doing the same though.

YOU WILL SAVE A FORTUNE and each time you do this, you are making an environmental saving and reducing the amount of landfill required for each toner cartridge. The printer companies could easily make cartridges like the Canon FC120 easily refillable out of the box, saving the customers money and the environmental costs would plummet, of course so would their profits, so I guess we will never see this happen.

So is it possible to refill the HP2600 Toner? Replacement cartridges can cost quite a lot if you do any amount of printing with this model.
It’s actually quite a simple toner cartridge to refill although it is fitted with a reset chip by HP to try and make it more difficult, still takes only a few minutes though if you have the right tools.

You do need to buy a replacement chip though when the printer shows toner low, but its very simple to replace. You should make sure that your toner cartridge is in good condition though. However a HP 2600 Toner cartridge in good condition should be able to be refilled 3 times at least. That’s usually a great saving on buying new cartridges, you’ll probably save abut 65-75% of the costs each time.

You’ll need a tool to create the hole which you can buy very cheaply from most toner refill companies. Ideally you’ll need to create two holes, one to empty the waste compartment, although if you only refilling once you may be able to skip this step.

Then you need to make a hole in the toner hopper toward the rear of the cartridge, then just pour in the replacement compatible toner with nice fresh ink ! Then you are nearly there, just the chip to reset.

The HP 2600 Laser printer has a reset chip on each cartridge, this sends status messages to the printer. Eventually it will just send toner empty messages and your HP 2600 printer will not print (even if it’s full of ink). You have to replace this chip in order to use the cartridge again, however it’s very inexpensive and simple to do. There should be instructions included with your chip if you have bought from a reputable seller of toner. It’s fairly simple though, you can easily replace the chip and replace it with a new chip and your toner cartridge will then work as new.

If you want to see someone look extremely uncomfortable whilst being questioned about their carbon footprint, I can recommend this clip.  The wonderful Jeremy Paxman asks Sting some rather tricky questions about how his footprint might possibly be rather large.   It’s important though deeds are what matters, and there’s far too many people using environmental issues as a platform.

Great publicity when pop stars draw attention to these issues, but when the hypocracy is there for everyone to see, you wonder how positive it is.

Anyway enjoy, Mr Paxman starts getting tough on about 6 minutes of this video.

So remember, you too can reduce your carbon footprint, just refill your toner cartridges with compatible toner. It’s quick to do and can be done with most laser printers (and inkjet), and can save you a lot of money on your refilling costs.

If you’ve a laser printer, you’re a target, a target for profits that is.   So who is targeting you well it’s the printer companies and it all started when you saw that great deal for a shiny new laser printer, what a bargain huh !  And all will be well as you put in the half empty ‘starter cartridge’ and start printing.

Your Great Deal Laser Printer

That’s the first clue you have, you’ll see lots of material and initiative about how eco-friendly all these companies are.  Yet they use all the resources required to produce a normal cartridge, and then only partly fill it. A complete waste of resources, the effort and expense in real terms to just fill it with toner ink for your laser printer is minimal but of course it delays you going on to the next stage.

That’s when you get the shock, the starter cartridge will normally be less than 50% full so pretty soon you’ll be off to price up new laser toner cartridges. In many case this will often be much more than the printer cost in the first place.  In fact it is not uncommon for a full set of laser toner cartridges to cost much, much more than a new printer. But of course they’ve got you now, what good is a big shiny, laser printer without ink?

What purpose does it serve, well it’s pretty much useless as we are aware.

You have no choice to hand over sometimes hundreds of dollars to get your ‘laser printer’ capable of printing again.  This tactic is often seen with good like razors, you buy a very cheap fancy razor for a few pence then find that the blades cost many times more. This is how HP, Samsungs and Lexmarks make money from you, the consumables, this is where the real profit starts to flow.

Have you ever looked at a  toner cartridge and wondered why you have to start again when all it needs is ink?   Does it look like it’s going to fall apart ?  Of course not and it won’t, the reason why you have to but a new one is because it MAKES MORE MONEY for the printer company. Years ago most cartridges used to have little stoppers on them, that you could unplug and fill up with ink,  they have mostly disappeared now not for any practical reason simply because the printer companies can make more money if you don’t. There is a huge environmental impact in all this, don’t be fooled by eco-friendly recycling schemes, if the printer companies didn’t actively stop you refilling toner cartridges it would instantly reduce the resources used and the landfill problem caused by these cartridges.

So How do you Refill Toner Laser Cartidges

It’s actually usually very easy, all you need to do is get some more ink into the cartridge and it will work.  That’s the general principle – there’s no need to modify, replace or change anything else in the cartridge – just top up the ink. Make sure you buy decent compatible toner from a company you can trust, and  importantly advise you on how to refill it.   Generally it’s fairly simple you just have to make a small hole with an inexpensive soldering iron and attachment (got mine for $5) and pour in the replacement toner ink, then seal up the whole with a stopper or even tape.

Of course the printer companies don’t like you doing this, and some have fitted ‘killer chips’ to stop that cartridge working after so many prints (another staggeringly environmentally wasteful tactic), if you have one of those you will often have to replace this little chip with a new one.  It’s very easy to do in most cases but it does add a few bucks to the cost of refilling  the toner, clever people in Taiwan are producing these chips very cheaply. Well that’s usually it, some printer models have little design problems which mean that they are a bit fiddly to replace but check with your toner refill supplier, they’ll know which ones to avoid.  Most however can be refilled with relative ease and the savings can be dramatic on some laser cartridges, check out the process here in this post which shows you how to refill toner.  Often you can refill many, many times, just keep an eye out on the print quality when it starts to get worse simply buy a new cartridge.

There are a few firms that do this and in my experience they are very professional, after all they will only stay in business if you keep refilling your laser printer.   Most will sell you the little kit extremely cheaply and advise you – I always use these guys TonerTopup but the important thing is to try it, you can’t damage your printer and it is much less wasteful, search on the Internet and you’ll find many more companies who will show you how to refill your laser cartridge simply.