Brother HL-404DN: flag gear reset extends life of original toner carts

[Robin-Whittle]

Summary: I was able to extend the life of the original toner cartridges in a Brother HL-4040CN without adding any toner - just by resetting the flag gear in the carts. The description below is what I did for the three colour carts. Presumably the same procedure would work for the black cart. It may well apply to some other Brother colour laser printers.

These carts also have a little window on each side. I haven't tried taping over these with black gaffa tape, because the carts are not yet close to empty - but this is a way of getting more use out of limited toner in the HL-5250DN.

I bought a Brother HL-4040CN in mid-2009 ago on special. It was a good deal. They can still be bought for AUD$400 or less inc. GST. I found that the print quality was not quite perfect - some minor mis-registration between the colours and black - but I am fussy. If there was a block of half-tone colour, there might be horizontal bands of more intense colour. However, testing it now, I find no bands at all. The quality is fine for my needs. For really high quality, a good inkjet and special paper is required.

The printer runs off the LAN and it turns its fans off when not in operation. It is quite bulky, but I like this, since it probably means larger toner carts and larger components in general for a longer life.

I was printing mainly text documents such as academic articles with a few colour illustrations. Only rarely did I print large photos.

One day, it refused to print (at least for a colour file) displaying: "Toner Life End - Replace Cyan(C) & Magenta(M) & Yellow(Y) Toner Cartridge." Via the front panel I found it had printed 2980 colour pages and 687 mono = 3667 total.

The specifications:

http://www.ht.com.au/part/U8244-Brother-HL-4040CN-printer-colour-laser/detail.hts

are that its initial cartridges will do up to 1500 pages at 20% coverage (M, C and Y) and likewise up to 2500 pages for BK.

The initial carts are TN-150 "standard-yield". TN-155 carts are "high yield" and are rated for 4000 pages for colour and 5000 for black. The TN-155 prices are pretty frightening - at ht.com.au AUD$251 each for the colour carts and AUD$168 for the black. I am sure plenty of people go out and spend AUD$921 once their printer tells them to replace the carts. There are also non-genuine carts for AUD$100 or so each.

I considered getting non-genuine carts, and then looked at toner refill kits. I bought a set of toner refills from The Printer Ink Warehouse http://www.ink-refills-ink.com/printer/HL+4040+CN+Color/16857/ in Michigan USA, because I have had such good experiences with their refills for the HL-5250DN (see other posts in this forum).

I was able to land the full set of refills - 3 x 150 grams C, M, Y and 1 x 160 grams BK - in Australia for close to AUD$100. I think this is a very good deal.

The instructions concern two things. Firstly, removing the old toner with vacuum and/or compressed air - and then half-filling the cart with new toner. Secondly, resetting the flag gear. With the HL-5250DN, I found it was indeed necessary to remove the old toner to avoid "shading".

I emptied the toner from the black cart - there was 46 grams remaining. So I put the toner back. I did not touch the flag gear for the black cart.

Then I considered the colour carts. I had weighed two of them when the printer was new, and by reweighing them, I determined they had only lost 15 or 16 grams of toner. Not bad for all those pages!

I reset the flag gear on the colour carts, put them all back in the machine, and after a few minutes it was happy to print again.

When the printer complains about the black cart, I will reset its flag gear. I plan to keep doing so for all carts until either the cart itself becomes worn out, or the cart is actually empty. If it is empty, I will vacuum it out to remove the old toner. I may remove the roller to do this more effectively. Then I will add the Printer Ink Warehouse toner and reset the flag gear again.

To reset the flag gear, I removed the cover of the left of the cart - by removing two screws and undoing a little clip on the front end of the cover (to the right when looking at the left of the cart). The spring can be pulled back, the gear pulled off and then put back in the proper position. With the cart sitting on a table, the correct position is where the symmetrical pointy bit of the flag gear is at about 10:30 o'clock, with its right side resting on the spring.

The instructions from Printer Ink Warehouse were for TN110 and TN115, but seemed to match my TN-150 carts. The instructions showed two flag gears - one for the TN-110 (AKA TN-150, I guess) one for the TN-115 (AKA TN-155, I guess). The gears go in the same position, but their flags - the bit which sticks out - are in different places on the gear.

It seems that on the very first turn of the toner cart, the flag gear sticks out its flag, to be sensed by a switch. After this, the flag gear runs out of teeth and sits parked in a position where the flag does not stick out. The low-yield carts have the flag initially at 1 o'clock and the high-yield carts have it at 5 o'clock. So the printer firstly determines that a new cart has been added by the flag sticking out on the first few revolutions. It figures out the low or high yield status of the cart by an early switch closing being "low yield" and a later one being "high yield".

Perhaps there's not a lot of difference between these carts - though I guess they put less toner in the low-yield ones.

At my current rate of toner usage, it looks like I will be right for quite a while.

Robin Whittle http://www.firstpr.com.au

 

[Robin-Whittle]

About 600 pages later, mainly colour pages, I started getting more complaints from the printer about toner cart end of life. In various stages, I reset the flag gears of all the four carts and covered the clear hole at the left, near the flag gear, with aluminium tape. Previously I had used black PVC insulation tape, and my impression is that it was still letting through some light, so maybe the printer uses infra-red LEDs.

Now the printer is working nicely again.

I have not yet added any toner, or removed any toner.

Maybe the printer will have some other way of detecting low toner, but on the current basis, I expect it to keep printing with the only limit being when it decides that enough cycles have been done with these low yield carts to complain again, in which case I will reset the flag gear again.

Eventually the toner will run out. I should be able to see this if I look at the rollers of each cart periodically - otherwise I will notice it in bad prints.

While I am not printing big blocks of black or colours, I am up to "Total Page Count: 4419, Color Page Count: 3634 and Monochrome Page Count: 785" (from the web-page front panel, since I have the printer on the LAN) on the original carts which came with the printer. Not bad since they are specified to go to 1500 pages.

- Robin Whittle http://www.firstpr.com.au

 

[ian]

One thing you are forgetting with these cartridges. They do not have a waste bin to collect the old used toner like the HP cartridges have. It just rolls back around the cartridge roller and goes back into the cartridge. This contaminates the powder in the cartridge. You might only see 15 grams of toner used but the old used toner ends up back into the cartridge and you will start to get poor print quality as a result and you will cause the drum to rollers to ware out faster because of the old powder in the cartridge.

Some other information for you. The 150 and 155 are the same cartridge, The 150 is filled with 70 grams and the 155 with 150grams. The only difference between the two cartridges is the flag gear. The 155 is white in colour and has two tabs sticking out and the 150 is gray in colour and has one. When you are resetting the flag gear look at the top of the gear and you see it looks like a cats head and you will see what looks like the cats "ears" you will know what i am talking about when you look at it. The spring must sit to the right of the cats ears so that the tab is sticking out at 12 o clock. ( or move it into position on the gear on the first tooth).

Please post your results as i would be very interested how the drum holds up.

 

[Robin-Whittle]

Short version: watch out for over-filling the toner carts. A full bottle may be too much.

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the information on the amount of toner in these carts. I think what you wrote about this printer not having a waste bin is incorrect. The HL-4040DN and similar have a special waste bin, below the belt assembly. This is mentioned in the user manual:

http://www.brother.ca/en/products/pdf/manuals/HL4040CN-UG.pdf

It is also mentioned in the notes on refilling these carts, from Uninet Imaging:

http://www.uninetimaging.com/downlo.../english/Brother_HL_4040_TN_115_Reman_eng.pdf

My printer has been working OK. I am up to:

Total Page Count : 6575
Color Page Count : 5069
Monochrome Page Count : 1506

with the original ("starter") carts. Recently, the printer has been asking for a new Black cart, so I reset the flag gear and carried on. After these requests became more frequent, I figured the cart must be getting low on toner. (I had previously blocked the clear plastic window on the left of all the carts with some aluminium adhesive tape - to trick the printer's firmware into thinking the carts were not yet empty of toner.)

I followed the above instructions and dismantled and cleaned the cart. I calculate there were 14 grams of old toner in the cart, and that the weight of the cart without toner is about 554 grams.

I put in the whole bottle of toner I bought from Printer Ink Warehouse:

http://www.ink-refills-ink.com/printer/HL+4040+CN+Color/16857/

You wrote that the TN155 carts have 150 grams of toner. This page mentions 160 grams. The bottle itself is labelled as having 170 grams and I calculated that there were actually 174 grams in the bottle.

When I put all this in the cart, it failed - there was toner coming out from where the developer roller slides past the doctor blade. So there was toner all over the place, with it falling onto the paper and around the black cart.

Reducing the total amount of toner to about 105 grams caused the cart to work perfectly.

I haven't yet tried the colour toner, but I expect I will do so soon.

If this toner enables me to get another 10k pages out of these carts, I will be very happy.

Normally, after buying the printer for ~$500 AUD (though it can be bought for less) users are meant to throw out the original carts at some page count less than this - probably in the low few thousands. Then they are supposed to either buy the low yield carts, which are only marginally less expensive, or buy the high yield ones:

Black = 1 x ~$135
Color = 3 x ~$220

This is nearly $800 - 60% more than the price of a new printer. This will supposedly give 5000 pages or so, which is $0.16 a page - not at all cheap.

Yet these carts are the same as the starter carts, except for having a different flag gear and 80 grams more toner.

Owners are expected to buy a new drum unit at 17,000 pages. This is ~270. At 20k pages, we are supposed to buy a new waste toner box (~$25). At 50k pages, (after two drum units . . . and 8, 9 or 10 sets of toner carts at $800 a set) we are supposed to buy a new belt unit (~$157).

The full set of new carts, drum unit, belt unit and waste toner box is ~$1250 - 2.5 times the cost of a new printer!

My inclination is to run these carts as long as I can, and then buy another printer - of the same type, or whatever it has been updated to by then. That would be cheaper than buying genuine Brother carts, and this gives me a whole new drum, belt, waste toner box . . . and indeed a whole new printer!

- Robin