Toner Cartridge Page Yield: Yes, Your Print Behavior Affects Output

It happens. And, it always happens at the worst time. You’re running a big print job on a Friday when, of course, the screen on the printer flashes ‘Low Toner’. And you won’t have delivery until Monday. So you push the OK button with the hope you can squeeze just enough to finish the run. But didn’t the toner cartridge page yield say it would last much longer?  

So, what happened?! Because you know, for 100% certainty, you calculated exactly how many sheets could print before the MICR toner cartridge ran out. The cartridge clearly stated it would run 10,000 sheets. But where did all the MICR toner go?  

What you didn’t consider is how much toner the printer uses during the start-up, cleaning, and shut down processes. When the print cartridge parts rotate, toner is transferred through the system and any unused MICR toner ends up in the waste hopper. As such, the cartridge yield diminishes faster than expected.  

There is hope. You can maximize your cartridge yield with proper printer maintenance and grouped print runs. First, let’s talk about page yield and what causes quicker diminishment.  

What Exactly is Toner Cartridge Page Yield?

Well, that’s the thing. There is nothing exact about cartridge yield. HP states that, “Page yield data should be used as a starting point for comparison purposes, and not to predict the exact yield you will get from your HP printer and cartridge.” It’s a very well-controlled and tested guesstimate, an expected average. There are many factors which contribute to page yield. And no two print-jobs will use the same amount of toner.  

A LaserJet cartridge contains many mechanical parts, such as a developer roller, organic photoconductor (OPC), and cleaning blade. These components wear during printing, as moving parts tend to do. In the same manner, different printing styles can cause different parts to wear at different rates which, in turn, can also factor into the diminishment of the overall toner cartridge page yield.  

What Causes the Toner to Deplete Sooner?

Document Design 

• The design of a document has a large impact on the cartridge yield. For example, if you’re only printing the MICR line of a check, or you only print a blue border on the left margin, you’re using very minimal MICR toner on the actual paper.  
• But the combination of very low page coverage (% of toner on paper) along with the high number or drum/part rotations required to process this single print job translates to a high waste percentage. This results in decreased print cartridge life.  
• All the excess toner not transferred to the paper is placed in the waste hopper. The right document design can help maximize toner usage.  

Stop/Start Printing 

• You can economize toner by running print jobs together, as one solid print run, in one file.  
• For example, instead of sending one check, or two copies of a pdf, to the printer at a time, put them all in one document as a solid, non-stopping print run (if you’re able to do so). This eliminates the start-up and shut down processes, which deplete toner.  

Environment 

• The print environment plays into the number of prints you’ll get per cartridge.  
• Did you know high humidity and high temperatures can cause toner yields to decrease? High humidity and temperatures causes the toner to clump. This means more toner is used than if the temperature and humidity were better controlled.  

Color vs Black 

• If you have a four-color printer (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow), the colors utilized can affect the other colors not being used.  
• Depending on the print settings, the printer may pull colors from the other cartridges to create the desired color.  
• These “alienation issues and alienation formulas” engage or disengage the color cartridges. Depending on how the cartridges are manufactured, as one cartridge with all four colors or as four individual cartridges, this can cause wear in the underutilized toners.  

Two-sided Printing 

• When set to duplex, rotating cartridge components continue to rotate as the page is inverted.  
• This motion causes mechanical wear, as we mentioned earlier, and can lead to more waste and less printed pages per cartridge.  

Coverage 

• Most toner yields are based on 5% coverage.  
• For example, a one-page, one-sided, double-spaced document would have approximately 5% coverage of toner.  
• Related to document design, if there are areas with heavy graphics or text more than 5%, this will decrease the toner yield as you are using more than 5% coverage for that page.  

The quality of the toner is also extremely important. With a high quality, reliable MICR toner you get better adhesion to the paper. For check printing, a high quality, high adhesion MICR toner means consistent character quality. But it also deters fraud since printed data is not easily scraped or washed without damaging the check paper. It also means less returned checks from the bank, and confidence that each payment will be successful.  

Maximize Your Toner Cartridge Page Yield

Unless you are printing in an ISO controlled* environment, toner cartridge page yield is an estimate, dependent on the factors above plus more. Try batch-printing to minimize the start-up, cleaning, and shut-down processes of the printer to help maximize the toner yield of your print cartridge.  

Please contact us at secure@troygroup.com or (304) 232-0899 if you’d like to speak with one of our technicians to help you economize your MICR toner cartridge page yield.  

*An ISO (International Organization for Standards) controlled environment is one which addresses many aspects of quality management and best practices.