Fill 'er up, please: Replacing toner can save big bucks. (Office Technology).

The ability to print in color, along with inexpensive acquisition costs are some of the reasons that the market has been inundated with this type of printer. Another reason is that while per page costs are less with many laser printers, it's pretty easy to refill an inkjet cartridge yourself.

With most office laser printers, you can get a refilled toner cartridge, or send an empty cartridge out to a specialist to have it toped off with more toner. Until now, however, adding laser toner to an empty cartridge wasn't something that you'd want to undertake on your own.

While inkjet cartridge refill kits are widely available at computer and office supply stores, and even from the Home Shopping Network, laser refilling supplies have been available only in bulk, and only to those who have taken the time and made the effort to track down the right suppliers.

That's changed recently, with the introduction of end-user oriented laser toner refill kits. These aren't available in any stores, and may never be. You can, however, buy a refill kit for most laser printers, and even many office copiers that use a laser print engine.

Full service? Self service?

The laser toner refill kits are the brainchild of John Gault, the owner of a Florida-based commercial toner refill service for the last 15 years. He realized that there is nothing intrinsically difficult about refilling a laser toner cartridge but that a consumer would have difficulty getting the correct toner that each cartridge required. He developed both an inexpensive refill tool kit, and consumer-sized packages of the correct type of toner for each laser printer. The result is a set of very affordable laser refill kits with which even a user who is not particularly mechanically inclined should have little difficulty.

The question that will come first to many office managers' minds is why bother? If you have lots of laser cartridges, and a contract with a refiller, you probably won't want to get started doing your own refilling.

While the process is not particularly difficult, it can get messy. Laser toner is nothing more than very finely powdered iron oxide (rust), with black pigment and a fine plaster binder. The iron oxide allows the toner to be manipulated electrostatically, the black pigment provides the coloring, and the plastic binder both holds everything together, and allows the toner to be melted onto the finished printed page.

The toner itself, however, is extremely viscous, and unless you are careful, can be spilled and wind up covering everything nearby in a black film.

The answer, as it is with refilling inkjet tanks, is economics. For testing, we used an empty toner cartridge of a venerable Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4 printer. New cartridges for the LJ4 cost about $90 each, and having the empty cartridge refilled at a local recharging service runs close to $60.

Compare that to the kit from www.TonerRefillKits.com. The bottle of toner matched to the LaserJet 4 costs $25, or even less if you purchase several at a time. We also need a $13 tool kit to perform this refill. Some laser toner cartridges actually have a port with a removable cover. Pop the cover off of the port, then simply pour in the toner to recharge the cartridge.

The cartridge from our LaserJet 4 was not as cooperative, unfortunately. With this type of cartridge, you must first cut a hole in the part of the cartridge that contains the toner tank before the cartridge can be refilled. The tool set helps with this. It contains a specially modified soldering iron with a cutting head attached, and an egg timer so that you can let the soldering iron heat up long enough so that it reaches the proper temperature to melt the cutting tool through the cartridge. Also included are a small set of pliers to remove the plastic plug, a file to smooth the edges of the hole, a plastic cover so that you can refill the cartridge another time, a screwdriver, and even some old newspaper so that you don't make too much of a mess. Also recommend are some throwaway plastic gloves and one of those inexpensive disposable filter masks. At the $13 price, TonerRefillKits.com isn't making its profit from the tool kits.

Actually refilling the cartridge took less than 10 minutes, including the three minutes spent waiting for the tool to heat up. The vendor recommends using only half the bottle of toner at a time, so if something goes wrong with the refilled cartridge, you still have a half a bottle of toner left to use on another cartridge. Most laser toner cartridges can be refilled two or more times. After that, the photoconductor drum starts to become scratched, leaving spots and streaks on your printed output. Or, the waste toner reservoir on the toner cartridge gets filled up and starts to leak toner into the printer.

If you are feeling really adventurous, the vendor is starting to offer replacement photoconductor drums for some of the toner cartridges.

The instructions that come with the kit are easy to follow. There was no trouble at all making the hole in the right place, filling our empty cartridge with toner, and plugging the hole with the included plastic plug. We did spread a lot of newspaper around our worktable, having, no desire to spend time cleaning a toner spill (which, fortunately, did not happen).

The experience with the toner refill kit was a very positive one. Even if you only get two refills out of each empty cartridge, you'll save a bundle of money, making the old LJ4 a very economical printer.

Ted Needleman is the former associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Accounting Technology magazine. He is now a technology consultant and writer based in Stony Point, NY His email address is [e-mail]