Refilling and Remanufactured
My first experience was refilling an HP toner cartridge at one of my past employer’s. The company was on a shoestring budget and I felt like this could be a good way to save us some money. I purchased a refill kit online that contained instructions, toner, a tool to burn a hole into the cartridge (simply a soldering iron with a copper tubing end cap) some aluminum tape to cover the hole, and a special toner cleaning cloth. It was a pretty easy process but VERY messy. If you try this, be sure to do it all outside. With the kit and cartridge I had I got at least 3 good refills.
In August of 2005 I noticed my cartridges for my personal printers were having problems so I purchased remanufactured cartridges for my Laserjet 4 and 6P from http://www.tonerpirate.com on eBay. The prices were amazing (almost the lowest I could find anywhere).
The 6P cartridge has worked flawlessly ever since, but I did have some issues with the other cartridge. The first LaserJet 4+ they shipped was either sent broken, or broken during shipment and the bag was full of toner. They promptly sent me a new cartridge at no cost (very good customer service, but I hope it wasn’t due to the fact that I own the inkjet printer forum). This cartridge was in good shape, but the first prints had a bit of image ghosting. I think it was because I had the intensity set too high on my printer. After adjusting a few settings the ghosting went away. I use this printer a lot and about 7 months later it started to say “toner low”. Around that time I also started to get a vertical line down the far side of each page printed. I believe the wiper in the cartridge went bad.
Well, it was time for another cartridge. I was in a hurry so I thought I’d give www.cartridgeworld.com a try. I’ve heard good things about CartridgeWorld and have spoken with the owner of a local franchise a few times. Really great guy. I exchanged 5 of the HP LJ 4+ cartridges I had sitting around and he gave me a good deal on a new cartridge. Even after the deal the price was still 50% higher than TonerPirate, but I’m expecting the quality to be much higher.
When this cartridge dies I think I’ll give refill a try. There are two main reasons for this:
1) To save some money
2) To really test how well Cartridge World remanufactures their cartridges.
The only issues with refilling is first, knowing if the toner I’m refilling with is a quality product, and second, I don’t think I’ll be able to exchange a toner cartridge with a hole cut into it.
I’ll update this page as I continue experimenting. Until then, you can read more about toner cartridges on my forum here: Printer Forum.
Update: 6/2/07:
I ended up printing 10,468 pages with my Cartridge World cartridge. Toward the last 300 pages I started to get light prints and so I played the “shake the cartridge” game to the point where I knew it was time to refill. I used some toner from, you won’t believe this, a few bottles of toner I had purchase back in 10/2004! I was almost reluctant to use the toner since it was about 3 years old, but I had kept it in a dark moderate temp place so I thought I’d give it a try. Well, I’ve printed 1,200 prints with it and so far so good!
I’m not sure if this is a testament to the quality of the Cartridge World remanufactured cartridge or the quality of the toner I used, but my guess is that it is a combination of both. Once this cartridge gets to the point of death I’ll probably go back to Cartridge World for my next cartridge… do you think they’ll take my abused cartridge with a refill hole in the top? Probably not. 
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February 7th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I have used remanufactured toner cartridges and also have done many of my own toner refills, here is what I think is true about your experience:
1) Tonerpirate and other rockbottom cost resellers (usually ebay companies) will buy and sell the cheapest toner cartridge they can find. This usually means that the cartridges they sell have not had any of the components changed, only the toner.
2) Cartridgesworld and other refill stores like 123 Refills and Rapid Refills technically and probably do remanufacture the cartridges professionally, removing and replacing worn out parts. This raises the cost significantly, but still much cheaper than originals.
The fact that you had a good experience with tonerpirate i think is quite by accident, i have ordered once from them and got a cartridge that died after about 100 pages. The reason is likely due to the fact that the empties are probably recycled without regard to changing the parts, only the toner. The reason i say this is because i took the cartridge to a professional refiller, and they told me it was the original drum and original blades were still inside, but that the cartridge had been refilled at least 1-2 times before.
I have also refilled many of my own cartridges, when refilling an original, the parts inside are good enough to last another cycle (for the most part), but deteriorate with subsequent refills. So I refill only original cartridges for 1 time, after that i buy from sources that change the parts of the cartridge, like 123 Refills or Cartridge world. Ive had similar quality experiences from both stores, and i would recommend either of them. I found 123 after cartridge world, and 123 was less expensive ($41 for a HP Q2612 which they include 50% more toner than the OEM, compared to $48 from Cartridge World for a model that has the same yield as the original). and their knowledge of the cartridges seems better, but it could be the person behind the store and not so much the chain.
February 9th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
ive also had bad experience with cheap website toners, i bought a refilled brother tn350 from ebay (dirt cheap) and it failed from page 1. ive tried 123refills toner for the same model, it was about 30% more expensive than the ebay one but still much cheaper than buying new one from staples. so far so good! i dont print that much but its looking as good as new.
ive never refilled a cartridge myself, but i think deffinetely theres a big difference if parts are changed vs not changed.
February 29th, 2008 at 4:39 am
please help me with images how to refill my hp q2612a cartridge.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I am an owner of 4 cartridge world stores in Pennsylvania. We refill toner cartridges for 60% of the cost of a new one in Staples. All vital parts of the cartridge are replaced with new parts that sometimes are better than the original parts. Our toners are reverserd engineered from the original to be close to 99% identical to the original toner. I can only attest to our own stores, as the stores are all private franchises, but we have a return rate of less than 5% of the cartridges ink and laser that we refill / remanufacture. With the right people doing the work, it is very successfull just like any other business.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
I tend to agree with you guys that I probably got lucky, but I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t be tempted to go with another low price re-manufacturer again.
Oh, by way of update, my LaserJet 4p has been constantly having printer jams. It was going to cost me about $120 in labor alone to get it worked on. I ended up just buying a Brother HL-2170W that has wired and wireless network support. $99 from Costco… hard to pass up. Biggest problem is that it is such a new printer that the cartridges are really hard to find remanufactured from anyone.
March 17th, 2008 at 6:17 am
I’ve used RPS Ink and Toners (www.rpsinkandtoners.com) the last two years and have had no problems. He sells the chips to reset the numbers, also.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I’m a tech over at Cartridge World Honolulu, and I can attest to bh’s post from Philedelphia. We do the same stuff here in Honolulu: 60% of Staples cost, Part replacement, specifically formulated toners, less than 5% return rate. That is why Cartridge World Honolulu can offer a 100% guarantee on all the laser (and inkjet) cartridges we make.
April 13th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Careful with RPS. They are just like them at tonerpirate, etc. You might as weell just buy copy machine toner, because thats what most these ebayers sell but in fancy bottles.