For a lot of laser printers you have the option of purchasing a standard yield or high yield cartridge. Different companies use different naming conventions for their cartridges, which can be confusing. For HP printers, the cartridge model ends in an A for standard yield, or X for high yield. For Brother printers, the cartridge […]

Toner cartridges are complicated things. You think it’s just a cartridge that will run out of toner and stop working, but towards the end of their life cycles they can do strange things. Like leaving weird blotches of toner on your paper. There are a lot of moving parts in a printer: toner cartridge, drum

There are usually two ways you find out that your new laser printer requires a separate drum unit. You change the toner cartridge and realize there is another big piece of plastic that the toner cartridge sits in. Or you get an alert on your printer to replace the printer’s drum unit. What is a

It’s really useful to have a colour laser printer. You never know when printing something with a bit of colour will be necessary to understand the document. Highlighting text, adding pictures, using different font colours are all helpful additions. But this means you’ll need to buy colour cartridges as well as black cartridges. Colour toner

Some offices print very little, some offices print so much that the printers are always working! Regardless of the type of office you’re working in, if you are working on a project that requires a lot of draft printing, there are often ways you can decrease the amount of toner the printer uses on each

If the toner on the page hasn’t faded and the cartridge is still producing good prints, you can safely ignore the “low toner” or “replace cartridge” alert on your printer. Most of the time this alert is automatic based on the length of time since you installed the cartridge or the number of pages the

Some toner companies use the term New Compatible toner cartridge. This kind of sounds like it’s a new name-brand cartridge, right? So if you see it for sale just a little bit cheaper than the name brand (OEM) cartridge, you think you’re getting a great deal! But what is a New Compatible toner cartridge? It

When your printer gives you an alert that you’re running low on toner, your first reaction may be to panic call your ETB Account Manager. While we always want to hear from you, you may be able to put off that phone call for a few days. 🙂 If you are still getting good quality

You’re used to your printer telling you to change the toner cartridge, and every once and a while it’ll tell you to change the drum unit. But now you’re getting an alert to change the maintenance kit. What is a maintenance kit? Depending on the make and model of your printer, your printer manufacturer will

First of all, what is a drum unit? The toner cartridge has all the toner powder in it, why do you need a drum unit? The drum is responsible for fusing the toner powder onto the paper. The fuser is also involved, but that’s a separate post 😊 But how often do you need to

You’ve just replaced your toner cartridge and notice that there is loose toner inside your printer. Don’t panic. Most likely your prints are still coming out looking great. Toner is a very fine powder that can escape the cartridge when you pull the seal. Some toner can also come out of the cartridge when you

It’s rare, but sometimes you’ll find regular dots or marks down your paper after printing. Cleaning the printer doesn’t fix it. You can see it on test prints too. This usually means that the drum was damaged during shipping or installation. There’s a “ding” or dent on your drum that is holding toner and causing

You might need to buy a special toner cartridge just for printing company cheques. This special cartridge is called a MICR toner cartridge. MICR stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. MICR toner cartridges have a special type of magnetic toner that is required by banking institutions to print cheques. If you have the choice between

Sometimes towards the end of your cartridge’s lifespan, you get black lines on one or both sides of the paper. This is often caused by the coating wearing off of the drum at the end of it’s cycle. When this happens, toner builds up on the metal of the drum and goes onto the pages

If your prints seem to be lighter since changing your cartridge then try adjusting the toner density setting for your printer. Every printer is slightly different. Sometimes this is in the menu on the printer, sometimes you can do this from your computer from the printer properties window (usually the advanced menu). You may have

If you have one of these Lexmark printers: MS310, MS310d, MS310dn, MS312dn, MS315dn, MS410d, MS410dn, MS415dn, MS510dn, MS610de, MS610dn, MS610dte, MS610dtn then you need to use the 50F1H00 (or 501H) toner in your printer. The 50F1H00 has a page yield of 5,000 pages. The Lexmark printers have a separate imaging unit. An imaging unit is

If you have one of these Brother printers: HL-2132, HL-2220, HL-2230, HL-2240, HL-2240D, HL-2242, HL-2242D, HL-2250, HL-2250D, HL-2270, HL-2270W, HL-2270DW, HL-2275DW, HL-2280, HL-2280DW, MFC-7240, MFC-7260, MFC-7360N, MFC-7460, MFC-7460DN, MFC-7860, MFC-7860DW, DCP-7060, DCP-7060D, DCP-7065, DCP-7065DN, IntelliFax-2840, IntelliFax-2940 then you need to use the TN450 toner in your printer. We recommend the TN450 because it is a

If you have one of these HP printers: Colour LaserJet Enterprise M455dn, Colour LaserJet Enterprise MFP M480f, Colour LaserJet Pro M454dn, M454dw, Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M479fdw, M479fdn, M479fdw, we recommend the W2020X (or 414X) series of cartridges because they are high yield cartridges. The black (W2020X) cartridge has a page yield of 7,500 pages,

If your toner cartridge is leaking or leaving toner splotches on the page when you first put it into the printer, most of the time this was caused by the cartridge being dropped during the shipping process. If this has happened when you first put the cartridge into the printer, get in touch with us!

If you have one of these Brother printers: DCP-L5500DN, DCP-L5600DN, DCP-L5650DN, HL-L5000D, HL-L5100DN, HL-L5200DW, HL-L5200DWT, HL-L6200DW, HL-L6200DWT, HL-L6250DW, HL-L6300DW, HL-L6400DW, HL-L6400DWT, MFC-L5700DW, MFC-L5800DW, MFC-L5850DW, MFC-L5900DW, MFC-L6700DW, MFC-L6750DW, MFC-L6800DW, MFC-L6900DW then you need to use the TN850 toner in your printer. We recommend the TN850 because it is a high yield cartridge and has a page