Success with bulk toner for Brother HL-5250DN

[Robin-Whittle]

I have had good experiences with the toner from the Printer Ink Warehouse:

http://www.ink-refills-ink.com/printer/Brother+HL-5250DN+Toner/5748/

As per their instructions, I found it is necessary to remove the original toner as much as possible before inserting the new toner. I did this by dismantling the cart to the point of having the roller removed, and then vacuuming that area, and also vacuuming out the toner chamber via the fill-plug.

It is my impression that a full 250gm bottle of toner is too much for these carts. Maybe best to use about half and then use the other half when that runs out.

It is my impression that the carts can be refilled a few times. After a while, they may start leaking toner and so require frequent removing and vacuuming. This is bad, since I think the excessive toner causes the drum to degenerate faster - but that can be cleaned . . .

I will write in another article about the success I had with cleaning the drum of this printer.

BTW, I have had *excellent* experiences with the HL-5250DN. I normally run it at 1200 DPI resolution just to slow it down. This gives less paper curl. It runs from the Ethernet and I print directly to it from various Windoze computers. It is reasonably quiet and the fans turn off promptly. The print quality is excellent, and I am on 72k pages, most of that on the one drum, after more than 3 years. It can print duplex (on both sides), but I don't use this.

This printer is so inexpensive that I don't worry about it. My previous $1000 laser printer was a Kyocera, which worked OK except it needed cleaning frequently. Once, while cleaning it, I dropped a screwdriver on the drum and then found the new drum was $600 (Australian dollars). I then bought the Brother HL-5250DN for about $360 or so, and it has been brilliant. (Before that, from 1991 for about 10 years, I had a 300DPI $4k Epson EPL-7500 - so I have observed great progress in this field.)

- Robin

 

[Robin-Whittle]

Here's some further progress on my quest - Eternal Life for laser printers and their expensive components.

I have found that after a few refills, the toner carts for the HL-5250DN start to "leak". There are dark random blotches on the page, typically along the right side. Toner builds up on the outside of the cart, and in the grey plastic frame of the drum assembly. Vacuuming it up will stop the blotches for a few copies, only. I figured something was wearing out, and guessed there wasn't much which could be done about it. My best guess was that the band of plastic (fabric in this case, I think) which wraps half around the toner cart's rubber roller was wearing out, and that this would be difficult or impossible to fix. So I was resigned to buying new toner carts and giving them a few refills each.

Tonight I investigated the toner leakage problem, and found it can easily be fixed.

I removed the rubber roller by unscrewing a small black plastic piece on the right (this is with the rubber roller facing away) and unclipping a little white plastic thing which is the bearing for the roller's shaft on the left. The little clip is pointing up and can be prised out, and moved forwards (or more likely towards you, if the rubber roller is facing you) which rotates the bearing in a way it can be removed, with the shaft of the roller, from the frame of the toner cart.

I cleaned off the old toner from the rubber roller with some tissues.

Beware of handling the cart now, since lots of toner can fall out.

Inside is a smaller felt covered (I think) roller which puts the toner on to the rubber roller. The outside face of the rubber roller rotates downwards when the printer is running. Toner sticks to it gently, and can be attracted to the charged parts of the drum. The toner which is not attracted will go back into the cart. The roller's surface rotates underneath on its way back to the interior of the cart. At the bottom of is rotation, the rubber roller rubs gently against a strip of clear plastic. The plastic is there to stop toner falling out during normal handling, but doesn't press so hard that it wipes any toner off the drum . . . in theory.

In reality, for some reason (probably highly dependent on the nature of the toner) some toner starts to build up on this clear plastic. Once it starts, more toner is scraped off by this build-up. Beyond a certain point, so much toner is scraped off that it falls towards the drum, and makes a mess, including with some toner falling onto the drum or more likely directly onto the paper.

The solution is to clean away this black build-up. I did so with q-tips (cotton buds) soaked in acetone and then with some tissues. It takes a few minutes, and finally involves a bit of rubbing, but it was possible to entirely clean the clear plastic.

There is a gotcha - don't let any drips of acetone into the cart, since this will solidify with the toner and cause trouble. Also, don't let the acetone-dipped Q-tip or tissue touch the felt roller. This happened to me, and I was able to rub at the spots to make sure they didn't go hard. Perhaps it would be good to somehow insert a strip of plastic close to the felt roller to protect it while this cleaning is done.

I added some toner, cleaned the drum (see the message: Cleaning drum of Brother HL-5250DN (surprising success)) and the printer worked like a charm, with no mess, for a 1000 or so pages I printed tonight.


So here's my overall thoughts on this printer.

As noted before, it prints really well, particularly at 1200 x 1200. It runs from Ethernet, prints double sided, makes no extraneous noise with fans etc.

The drums can be made to go for a long time - I think much longer than the 25,000 copies specified. I made a mess of one drum and am running a second now, but I am up to 75887 pages, and if I hadn't damaged the first drum, I think it would be working fine now that I know how to clean it.

The toner carts can be made to go for a long time too - with this cleaning technique solving the only fundamental problem I have yet encountered with the carts. They need refilling, as described in the previous message, which involves cleaning out for the first refill, but anyone with a little skill and patience can do this. The cost of bulk toner is vastly less than the cost of buying new carts. I got mine from the Printer Ink Warehouse.

As far as I know, there are only two differences between the low and high yield carts: the amount of toner and the exact detail of the "flag gear". The flag gear rotates nearly one turn on the first rotation of the cart, and the printer senses a lobe on the gear, to determine firstly that this is a "new" cart and secondly whether it is a low-yield or high-yield cart. The low-yield carts have a gear which sticks out its lobe at a slightly different time in the first rotation of the cart's mechanism to the time at which a high yield cart's gear sticks out its lobe.

Perhaps the original cart doesn't have a flag gear - but it is possible to buy a new flag gear from companies which sell bulk toner.

I understand that the printer will refuse to print, complaining about the need for a new toner cart, if one of two conditions are true:

1 - There is not enough toner in the cart, and an infra-red (I
guess) LED can shine through the cart via the two clear
windows on each side.

(This can be fixed for a while with some black tape - or by
adding more toner. For the original toner in the cart, I
suggest using black tape, so all of it is used, before
it is time to clean out the old toner and add new bulk
toner.)

2 - The printer has decided that the "current toner cart"
has done more than X pages (or perhaps something more
complex based on calculated toner usage) where X depends
on whether the printer thinks it is running with the original
cart, or with a low-yield or a high-yield cart.

The fix for state 2 is to put in a cartridge - not necessarily the one you are using - with its flag-gear reset. The first time the printer tries to rotate the cart, it looks for the flag-gear lobe.

The lobe only sticks out for a fraction of a second. After that, the flag gear rotates further and goes to a parked position, where there are no more teeth engaged with the driving gear. This state is indistinguishable to the printer from there being no flag gear at all.

Sensing the flag gear lobe makes the printer think you have just inserted a factory fresh toner cart, and it will then start counting down from a high number X, which would depend on whether the printer thought this was a high or low yield cart. The gears for these two carts and different, with different timing of the lobes.

So, in theory, you could buy one of these printers and keep it going for a long time, by cleaning the drum and by refilling the original toner cart. However, you would also need to get a flag gear for the original toner cart, and put it in the "reset" position.

To do this, unscrew the two screws holding the cover on the left of the cart. The flag gear needs to be inserted on its shaft in a position which is about as clockwise as it can be while still having a few teeth on the anti-clockwise end of its set of teeth, engaging with the drive gear. Then, replace the cover.

So if you are prepared to do a little work, I think you could get this inexpensive printer to run on bulk toner, with its original toner cart, for a long time. I don't know what the actual life of a toner cart would be with this cleaning technique, but maybe you could get 20k, 50k pages from each toner cart.

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

 

[RMM]

Thank you for your guide!

I refilled my first toner cartridge because of your post here. My father's business has 20+ Brother laserjets, and we do a lot of printing, so I figured we could save a lot of money refilling the laserjets as well as the inkjets.

I refilled a OEM only once used TN-360 cartridge using cheap ($7.80) toner from the seller "tonerking" on eBay. I dumped out all of the old toner, tapped the cartridge really well, then filled the cartridge with the new toner and reset the flag gear.

After a few days, the prints starting developing a light grey streak down the middle of the prints. Nothing too severe, so I took out the drum unit, cleaned the "carona" wire, and reinstalled. Things seemed to get better for a while. Fast forward a few days... the secretary calls me and tells me that printer is basically dumping toner all over the paper. No good!!!

We were in a bind so I ended up buying a new drum+oem cartridge from the store to get it going again in a hurry.

What went wrong here?
I have two theories.
1. I didn't clean out the original toner well enough. I tapped it to death and probably got 95% plus of it out, but maybe the remaining toner screwed things up.

2. The toner I bought was incompatible and cheap. I purchased some toner from the same source as the original poster and will give it another try using "quality" toner. It seems that it is difficult to know whether or not a toner source is any good.

Any other tips before I give this another go? I am only planning on refilling each cartridge once or twice then discarding it and using new OEM cartridge. I don't have the time to remanufacture 20+ cartridges each month.

Thanks!

 

[Robin-Whittle]

Hi RMM,

You mention a TN360 cartridge, so the printer you are working with is not the same as mine. My experience is solely with the HL-5250DN. In Australia the toner carts for the HL-5350DN are called TN-3145 / TN-3185 (low/high yield) and in the USA, I understand, TN550/TN580. I am working with Brother cartridges, but you mention your refilled an "OEM" cart - I guess this means made by a company other than Brother.

I removed the main roller from the cart so I could vacuum out the old toner before adding the new. You didn't do this. With the "developer roller" facing me, at the right of the strip of metal is a white nylon clip thing ("locking tab" in the document mentioned below) which I can undo by prising it to the left and rotating it towards me. This is one bearing for the roller, and the bearing can then be slipped out, so the roller can be removed.

I used toner from the Printer Ink Warehouse.

So you have a different printer, different design of toner cart, a non-Brother toner cart and toner from a completely different company. While it may be true that some or many Brother laser printers have similar principles of operation and the same or similar Brother toner, there could also be fundamental differences between how the printers work and what sort of toner they use.

In my 30 June message above, I explained how I had a problem with toner building up on a plastic strip at the bottom of the toner cart's main roller. The degree to which this would build up depends entirely on the toner itself. Perhaps the original Brother toner doesn't do this, or doesn't build up at a rate which becomes a problem before the toner runs out. My experience is that the problem only occurs after I have been using the Printer Ink Warehouse toner - so maybe it wouldn't happen, or would occur to a greater extent, with toner from another supplier. I found that this problem could be fixed.

I suggest you have a look at the toner cart and pull out the roller. With the above information you may be able to figure out what is causing the "dumping of toner" problem. Please write with the exact details of the printer you are working with, and - if you are not using Brother carts - the manufacturer of the carts.

I gave the URL for the toner I bought in the first message. The bottle is labelled:

10109 Brother TN 550, 580, 3170, 3130, HL 5250 Absolute Black (tm)
toner 250g (7,000) pages

Googling "Absolute Black toner" led me to the manufacturer:

http://www.uninetimaging.com

This is clearly not an el-cheapo outfit. They have technical information on particular types of print engine from multiple manufacturers - and have a detailed guide to "remanufacturing" the toner carts for the HL-5250DN and similar printers:

http://www.uninetimaging.com/newsletter/Brother_HL5200_TN550_580_Reman_Eng.pdf

This applies to: HL-5240, HL-5250DN, HL-5250DNT, HL-5270DN, HL-5280DW, DCP-8060, MFC 8860DN.

I found this guide interesting, but it doesn't mention two things I wrote about above: 1/ cleaning the build-up of "stuff" on the drum; 2/ cleaning the build-up of toner on the plastic strip below the "developer roller" in the toner cart.

I am up to 77464 pages - 1577 pages since my previous message. The printer is working perfectly apart from one one minor problem: When printing a lot of pages in a single run (a book from Project Gutenberg) with fine text and the printer driver set for 600 DPI, there were a few "echoes" of the image - slight traces of characters from a previous revolution of the drum I guess.

I think this is not a problem when running with the (Win XP) printer driver set (in Advanced options) for "1200 dpi". This gives the highest quality printing, and the main advantage to me is that it prints at about half the speed of the 600 DPI setting. My experience is that this slower speed involves less curl of the paper, due to more thorough heating. At the fast speed, I think the fuser roller only tends to dry one side of the paper, causing curl. I think the slower 1200 DPI mode also reduces or eliminates this "echo" problem.

There is a similar guide for the toner cart you are working with:

http://www.uninetimaging.com/newsletter/Brother_HL_2170W_TN360_Reman_eng.pdf

My guess is that the problem you are having is due to not completely cleaning out the old toner. If you read the above guide, completely clean out the toner and probably dismantle the drum unit and gently vacuum off the toner from the cleaning brush above the drum . . . and if you install the toner from Printer Ink Warehouse, which is presumably "Absolute Black" from UniNet Imaging . . . perhaps you will have more luck.

- Robin

 

[RMM]

I suppose I should clarify a few things.

1. I do have experience with a few different Brother cartridges and the ones that I have (the consumer level printers) all seem to be of the same basic design.

2. An "OEM" cart. means "Original Equipment Manufacturer" meaning that it indeed is an original Brother cartridge.

3. I have now ordered some toner from Printer Toner Warehouse and will give it a try.

I suspect that the problems I had were twofold: 1. Poor quality toner. 2. Not cleaning the cartridge as well as I should have.

This time I am going to thoroughly clean the cartridge with a vacuum cleaner and compressed air. I will disassemble it if its needed.

I will report back on my second try.

Thank you for your time and consideration.