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The purpose of a laser printer is to stick toner onto paper, so during it's life it will consume large quantities of both.
As well as toner the printing process uses a photoconductive drum, a developer, and a fuser. These each have limited lives as well.
| A typical OPC drum will have a life between 5,000 and 20,000 pages. |
| Developers often have longer lives - 50,000 to 150,000 pages. |
| Fusers can have still longer lives - 150,000 pages plus. |
To put these figures in perspective, most workplaces work 250 days per year so:
| if the printer is just used for a couple of pages every hour a 5,000 page toner cartridge will last a year - and the developer and fuser could effectively last forever. |
| if the printer spits out a page per minute a 150,000 page fuser will last just over a year - and it will use 30 toner cartridges - one per fortnight. |
Printer users generally worry about the cost of cartridges. Users have some reason to worry that cartridges are too expensive becuse the profit from making them is what is keeping some large IT companies profitable - and not just the printer division but the whole computer making, networking and service operation. (HP is a case in point, but Lexmark, Canon, Epson and Xerox too? with Dell hopeful?)
Printer users also have cause to be grateful for the cartridge idea. If printer makers hadn't incorporated most of the points of wear in neat little user changeable modules looking after laser printers would need training - and possibly a service technician.
Large laser printers and photocopiers often have separate toner, developer, drum and waste bottle elements. Each device has a plastic chassis which is wasted when the device is changed, but the user can console themselves that the economic and environmental cost of providing this has been balanced by extracting the maximum life from the device.
Big fast machines normally cost sufficient that one or two people in an organisation will be given some sort of training in how it works - even if this just happens informally when an engineer gets called out. Larger machines even have passworded control panels to lock untrained personnel out of critical functions. Some users need to know how to avoid spilling toner, not to put the developer down on the carpet, and to put the stopper in the waste bottle before throwing it in the bin.
Integrated Cartridges
Smaller printers are spread throughout an organisation and users often have little idea how they work. Most smaller printers use integrated cartridges that include toner, developer, drum, cleaner and waste-bottle in one unit. Constructing a laser printer using cartridges saves users a lot of bother - they don't have to deal with unfamiliar tasks like changing a developer. The whole job is done when the single integrated cartridge is changed.
Printer manufacturers may not be solely concerned with user convenience.
The economics of printer manufacture look a lot better if the manufacturer can expect to profit from selling a stream of cartridges. A typical workgroup printer will use a cartridge every few weeks. Manufacturers can make more money from cartridges than from printers.
Manufacturers may also be wary of potential health issues. Toner powder may be hazardous simply because it is such a fine powder, so if it is spilled the dust spreads around and will be inhaled. Toner is not thought very hazardous but exposure should be minimized. OPC dust in waste toner may be still more dangerous. Unskilled users can make a dreadful mess when they try to load toner into a hopper, or take a waste-bottle out without spillage.
Cartridges may be convenient, but there are questions about whether they are economical and what their environmental impact is. In principle it might be possible to gauge the usage rates of all the components so that they all reach exhaustion at the same time. In practice the toner tends to run out leaving a lot of life in other parts.
An industry has grown up recovering spent cartridges, replacing the toner and possibly other components and then selling the refurbished cartridge at a discount price. Some printer manufacturers do this themselves - influenced by environmental considerations. There are also a host of third party firms doing the same job.
The convenience of a cartridge should be balanced against it's costs. Toner powder, iron filings for developers and organic-photo-conductor drums are not inherently expensive - so it ought to be possible to buy:
- printers with separate consumables that need knowledgeable staff but cost very little to run
- integrated cartridge machines where the cost of operation is compensated by convenience.
The economics of printer cartridge use are dominated by large scale manufacture and distribution. A substantial amount of material is used in making a typical laser printer cartridge- ABS plastic to make the cartridge chassis, polyurethane foam to make seals, mylar and brass for toner dosing controls, aluminium and OPC coating to make the drum. Manufactured in one-off quantities the parts of a cartridge would cost a fortune. Made in world-scale factories the unit cost is very low.
Printer manufacturers aim to sell a lot of cartridges. If a printer has a life of a million pages, and the cartridge has a life of 10,000 pages then the printer will consume 100 cartridges. If a print engine design sells well then the manufacturer has a guaranteed market for cartridges. Cartridges are mass manufactured in world-scale production plants with huge economies of scale.
Printer manufacturers invariably make much more profit on cartridges than they do on printers. A cartridge making factory handles a larger volume of goods than one making printers and they are simpler to make. Customer psychology is very different as well. The decision on what kind of £1,000 laser printer to buy will probably be made by the IT department, who may well do a lot of research on features and expected running costs. The decision on buying cartridges might be left to whoever is in charge of stationery - who will pick up their favourite catalogue and just place the order. Printer users may have complex tendering procedures for £1,000 laser printers and no procedure at all for £50 cartridges.
Given the fact that a £1,000 printer is a captive market for £5,000 worth of cartridges the manufacturers interest is self-evident.
Cartridge making and printer pricing are a game. Suppose a printer costs over £1,000 then departments might need permission to buy it. Suppose the cartridges cost over £100 the purchasing department will ring alarm bells every time one is purchased - even if they last for 30,000 pages.
Now suppose the printer costs £299. This probably falls within a departments discretional spending. Cartridges can be made smaller so that they cost £35 - they don't last 3,000 pages but nobody turns a hair because "everyone knows you'll need to buy cartridges". The cheaper printer with cheaper cartridges may be rather poor value for users but all the numbers are small. Perhaps not surprisingly it often seems that the low cost to buy for but expensive to run printer is the kind that is gaining a dominant position in the market.
Orginal Art
Printer manufacturers almost invariably recommend using only original cartridges supplied by themselves. They would, wouldn't they?
Engineering experience over the years has tended to confirm the printer manufacturers recommendations. Perhaps its a balance and manufacturers new originals are best if time is worth more than money.
Most recycled cartridges are quite good, perhaps the print quality might not be as sharp as it could be but on ordinary business text no-one is likely to notice or care. Every now and then a recycled cartridge proves dreadful, leaking toner into the print mechanism. It only takes one poor quality cartridge in a series of ten to completely undermine the economics of refurbishing and recycling. A poor quality cartridge leaks toner powder and the build-up in the printer mechanism damages the print quality even when the cartridge is changed because there is material on internal parts that need to be clean. Cleaning the mechanism goes well beyond anything the user might do, so an IT technician or an outside engineer has to be called in.
The idea of recycling is sound - it makes good economic and evironmental sense to re-use components. In principle it should be possible to save a lot of money by using recycled cartridges. Only a few components need to be renewed:
| Toner itself exhausts of course - a half kilo or so of plastic powder |
| Developer - a few hundred grams of iron filings. It is probably feasible to filter good from bad developer and recycle good material |
| OPC material on the drum if it is exhausted - a wash of two layers of plastic. OPC drums can be tested in a rig before they are assembled in a cartridge. |
| A few other components need to be checked - drum cleaner and doctor blades for instance. |
There should be environmental benefits from preventing so much plastic and metal being wasted.
At some point in the near future people have to switch from the commercial and logistics needed for recycling to were ever to become universally accepted
Environment
Printer cartridge manufacture has the same economics as that of electronic toys - amazing things can be produced at low price if the economies of scale are large enough. Of course the cartridge gives no-one any joy directly - but what it prints might do so.
The availability of computer printing has doubled paper consumption (in the UK) and laser printers are largely to blame for this. Vast numbers of cartridges are discarded and many wind up in incinerators and land-fill.
Incineration may recover some environmental value from a cartridge, the plastic parts will burn away (the energy might help drive a neighbourhood heating scheme) and the metal components will be left behind for recycling. One problem is that undesirable elements in the plastic will also be vaporized and blown up the smoke-stack of the incinerator.
One alternative is putting the cartridge in land fill which will leave the whole thing to decay over a much longer time. Land fill gives less immediate impact but no long-term economic or environmental benefit.
Recycling
Only a small part of an integrated cartridge actually becomes exhausted on it's first use - usually the toner and waste-bottle. The OPC drum and the developer probably have a lot of life left in them. The plastic components of the cartridge shell may well last as long as the printer chassis itself. By replacing worn out parts the cartridge can be refurbished and re-used.
The first problem in recycling is the logistic process that delivers parts to customers. Cartridges are made in world-scale plants giving huge scale economies of production. They move to distributors warehouses, then to dealers and consumers. The distribution industry is structured to make a profit on moving material out to the consumer. It is not built to take cartridges back.
Materials Recovery
Recycling works reasonably well where materials have intrinsic value. A metal works usually has several skips gathering swarf and waste from processing and if it is separated into ferrous and non ferrous components the scrap has a clear value.
Most end user products are much more difficult to deal with because they are composite. Larger objects are relatively easy to deal with so a significant proportion of metals used in a car are ecycled. Plastic, glass and paper are recycled, but the market varies a great deal. There is little demand for recycled plastic as a feedstock for any process - so the material in a laser printer cartridge has little value as plastic. In countries which tax waste disposal a used cartridge probably has a negative net value - the only economically recoverable material might be an aluminium drum.
Crushing and shredding cartridges gets back the raw material without the labour cost but the material is just feedstock for any manufacturing process, so recycling this way is energy intensive.Laser printer cartridges are complex assemblies so they are not even a good source of aluminium. The labour involved in stripping a cartridge into component parts might average quarter of an hour, so unless the parts are worth £1 there is no way the work can meet a UK minimum wage. Recycling cartridges this way is labour intensive
Re-using the components of spent cartridges ought to make more sense.
Rebuilding
The best use for an old cartridge ought to be re-building as new from existing parts.
A large printer has separate toner, developer, drum and waste-hopper mechanisms, and the user has enough expertise to identify problems and change the components without making a mess. The recycling operation is effectively doing this job in a central depot.
Printer manufacturers are often dismissive about the quality of refurbished cartridges from anyone but themselves – but they would be, they make a great part of their profits from sales of new consumables.
Unfortunately engineering experience makes us sceptical about the quality of refurbished cartridges.
Refurbishing a laser printer cartridge ought to be much more complicated than just refilling the toner hopper.
Some manufacturers (such as Canon) run their own refurbishment schemes. No doubt they can ensure that they have all the right parts available to do a good job.
Refurbishment companies may be able to get hold of an appropriate grade of toner, so this allows them to do a basic job. From their point of view there can be good money involved – some of the bigger cartridges retail for over £100 but contain £5 worth of toner. If a refurbished cartridge costs £70 users think they are getting a good deal and think they are "helping the environment".
Unfortunately refurbishment companies may not find it easy to get new OPC drums and scraper blades. From the evidence we have seen scraper blades are a common source of trouble, with grainy-looking print and intermittent avalanches of waste toner down into the printers transfer station a regular problem.
Recovering spent cartridges might best be done when new cartridges are delivered to users. The problem is that the courier, vendor, distributor and manufacturer each have to be rewarded or they won't take the old one back. One answer is to build the cost of recovery into the price of a new cartridge, but then:
- there are opportunities for distributors to undercut the scheme if return of spent cartridges is difficult.
- all the spent cartridges are concentrated back at the manufacturer - which may not be the best organisation to re-cycle parts.
Open Information
In an ideal world printer manufacturers would make the exact composition of their cartridges open information so that recycling would be easy and not require any long transport routes. In practice most manufacturers keep their cartridge information confidential to give an advantage to their own schemes. Environmental issues have become just one more part of the marketing proposition.