Folks are dumping laser printers that still have toner in them. Or even if it’s “empty”, not everyone knows the shaking trick. I also find on the 2nd-hand market really dirt cheap toner cartridges, like $/€ 1—5, but they are never for my model of printer.
So is it sensible to try to salvage the toner from incompatible cartridges? A loooong time ago toner came in a bottle (like a big version of the plastic ketchup bottles in small diners). The printer had no cartridge, just a toner tank with a lid. You open the lid and squeeze the bottle.
I think toner is thought to be too hazardous or messy for these days of more persnickety/pampering designs. Everything seems to use a cartridge now. But in terms of recovering toner destined for landfill, what can we do?
Drilling a hole seems like a risk because plastic bits would fall in with the toner. But what if a soldering iron is used to melt a hole? I’m thinking the hole would have to be big enough for vinyl aqarium tubing to connect the salvage cartridge to the target cartridge. Then the salvage cartridge would have to be rattled to move the toner down the tube. I don’t suppose there is any practical way to use a vacuum.
Of course before melting anything, I would look for an existing exit nipple or port and try to plumb the two exits together. Or transfer to a squeeze bottle then try to mate the squeeze bottle to the target cartridge exit opening.
You must log in or # to comment.
I don’t suppose there is any practical way to use a vacuum.
I can’t help with the rest of your post, but have a look at the big dust extraction setups for woodworking. They suck the dust away into a container without sucking it into the pump.
I don’t know too much about them, but they pull the dust into the container without clogging the filters, so it might work on a smaller scale for toner.
Good luck :)
But in terms of recovering toner destined for landfill, what can we do?
There is only a small amount of toner left in a cartridge (perhaps 10% at the max?) which might be a few ml or oz. The danger to the exercise of trying to recover it would be:
- being inhaled by the human
- spread of excess microplastics to the environment.
Lets even say you’re successful in recovering it. Any moisture is going to ruin the prints or other printer parts. Not all toner is the same size, so mixing them is going to lead to possible bad image quality or more of the toner coming off on hands or being inhaled by document holders (because its unfused).
I would highly recommend against this. The best I think we could to would be to melt the whole cartridge so the microplastic toner becomes a single large solid.
