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From: mkm@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Mark Murray)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Refilling/Reusing LaserWriter Toner Cartridges
Message-ID: <8708070032.AA08664@brillig.umd.edu>
Date: Thu, 6-Aug-87 13:43:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: brillig.8708070032.AA08664
Posted: Thu Aug  6 13:43:56 1987
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I've tried three cartridge re-charger vendors so far, and the success
rate is around 75%; no problems with 3 out of 4 cartridges from these
vendors.  Ninety percent of the problems are leaky cartridges.  You
would notice powder inside the laserwriter, in addition to blotched
output.  The other problems have included tiny dots on every output page
(symptomatic of toner powder grains too large for the laserwriter) and 
a dark vertical smudge down the right side of the page, less than
one-sixteenth of an inch wide, but ruining clean output nevertheless.

The last two vendors have 'guaranteed' exchange programs; if you're
not satisfied with any cartridge, they'll replace it.  Fine.  Once
when that happened, I had the vendor come out and leave me a cartridge
for a leaky one.  The one he replaced it with not only leaked, but as
the unit was printing, the color dial (indicating green, yellow, red)
did its impression of a kaleidoscope, turning with the drum on each
revolution.

Recharged cartridges that have no problems do, however, seem to have
more toner powder in them than new cartridges.  We've gotten as many
as 2-3K more output pages from a recharged unit.