Laser Toner Cartridge Designs Improve Performance

Note: This white paper is about the issues that should be considered when selecting laser toner cartridges (one of the most expensive office supply items) and what the purchaser should know about cartridge page yield and quality. Another paper discusses the hidden costs involved with cartridge replacement and lost productivity.

Summary

Laser toner cartridges are a major office supply cost, usually second only to paper. Consequently, there is great pressure on purchasing personnel to reduce laser toner cartridge expenses. Since, however, every user in an organization is affected by the quality and reliability of toner cartridges, purchasing personnel are also under pressure to buy high quality laser toner cartridges. For these reasons, it is important to establish criteria for purchasing laser toner cartridges that offer the best combination of quality and total cost of ownership. Until recently, the only way to ensure consistent quality cartridges was to purchase high-priced OEM cartridges such as Hewlett-Packard or Lexmark.

But now there is a new generation of laser toner cartridges that dramatically increases page yields, lowers costs per page, reduces replacement costs by approximately 50%, and delivers unsurpassed quality and reliability. This alternative, developed by Massachusetts-based Clarity Imaging Technologies, Inc., is based on "High Efficiency Toner Transfer Technology"^TM. Three patents have been awarded for this technology that has been implemented in a broad product line of PageMax^® cartridges for Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark and IBM laser printers, as well as Canon fax machines.

The capabilities of PageMax^® cartridges have been verified through extensive customer experience and independent laboratory testing.

Sample Test Results

The results above, of testing conducted by engineers at Industry Analysts, Inc. (Fairfield, NJ), show that PageMax cartridges yield more than double the pages versus the compatible HP or Lexmark cartridge.

The Laser Toner Cartridge Market

Desktop laser printers have proliferated since their introduction in 1984 and there are estimated to be over 35 million in service throughout the world today. These are installed as personal-use, shared workgroup and enterprise systems in non-business, business and institutional sites. These printers consume from one to over 50 toner cartridges per year, and according to the research firm CAP Ventures, produced a total U.S. consumption of 47 million cartridges in 1998. CAP Ventures also estimates that Hewlett-Packard type laser printers have over 75% market share and that printers manufactured by Lexmark International have the second largest share with approximately 10% of the market.

Laser printers have very long lives and many older models frequently get shifted to lower level applications when new, higher-performance models arrive. The end results are both a huge installed base of laser printers of various ages and types, and a major need for aftermarket toner cartridges. Because toner cartridges are so expensive and so critical to employee productivity, office administrators should strive to create an efficient and cost-effective cartridge replacement process. Such a process will optimize cartridge selection and the steps in ordering, stocking, and delivering cartridges to the end user. Such a program will also cover the efficient recovery and return shipment of depleted cartridges to meet environmental and energy conservation needs.

In order to make a more informed decision about which laser toner cartridges to use, it is helpful for administrators to know how laser toner cartridges work and what factors affect page yield, quality and the frequency of replacement. This is because cartridges from different manufacturers do not all have the same page yield, replacement frequency, or print quality and reliability.

Laser Toner Cartridge Operation

Both Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark laser printers utilize an all-in-one design concept in which the toner supply and most of the key components required for laser printing are housed in one user-replaceable unit.

A laser toner cartridge contains a rotating photoreceptor image drum about one inch in diameter, which rotates 3 times to print a complete page. This small drum size enables a very compact design. The actual imaging process is a continuous one in which cleaning, charging, laser beam writing, toner pickup, and toner transfer to the paper each occur during each rotation of the drum. The process is repeated until the entire page has been transferred to the paper.

A laser toner cartridge is a precision system and has to be carefully designed and manufactured in order to produce consistent high-quality prints for the complete life of the cartridge. Since toner can create wear on the drum surface, cartridge seals, and blades, it?s desirable to manage the amount of toner transferred to the drum, and then to the paper, so that excess or waste toner is minimized. The Appendix at the end of this paper, outlines the steps in cartridge/printer operation in order to familiarize readers with basic cartridge terminology and operation.

The Hewlett-Packard Cartridge Story

Hewlett-Packard brand printers are designed around Canon print engines and Canon, Inc. manufactures the cartridges for Hewlett-Packard. Other companies such as Apple Computer, Brother, Canon, IBM and QMS, however, also use the printer engines and cartridges used by Hewlett-Packard. Thus, the information that follows for Hewlett-Packard brand cartridges also holds for all branded cartridges manufactured by Canon.

The Appendix outlines how the toner moves through a typical Hewlett-Packard cartridge. The toner, a plastic-based compound containing iron oxide, is attracted from the toner tank to the developer cylinder (tube) by a stationary magnetic element inside the cylinder. The developer cylinder rotates around the magnet and is coated by toner. A metering blade that scrapes off excess toner and also creates an electrostatic charge on the toner controls the depth and uniformity of the toner on the developer cylinder. Images are created when toner is transferred from the developer cylinder to a photoreceptor image drum.

The photoreceptor image drum starts out with a uniform charge applied to its surface by the Primary Charge Roller (PCR), and under software control, the laser sweeps over the image drum and discharges the surface of the drum wherever the image should appear. While rotating, and at the point where the developer cylinder and image drum cylinder almost touch (the nip), the discharged areas of the image cylinder attract the charged toner, causing it to jump from the developer cylinder to the image cylinder. The amount of toner that actually transfers to the image cylinder is determined by the characteristics of the toner, the amount of charge on the image drum and toner, and the characteristics of the magnetic fields generated by the stationary magnet in the developer cylinder.

Clarity?s research determined that the cartridges manufactured by Canon for Hewlett-Packard and others, transfer more toner to the image drum than is required to achieve a high quality image and that toner is not transferred as uniformly as it could be. This results in excess toner being deposited on the paper and excess toner left on the drum, which then has to be scraped off and collected in the waste hopper.

High Efficiency Toner Transfer Technology

Clarity found that by changing the magnetic properties of the stationary magnet inside of the developer cylinder, it could more precisely control the amount and uniformity of toner that is transferred to the image drum. By doing this, excess toner on the drum surface is minimized and less toner is transferred to the paper. This is called "high-efficiency toner transfer technology" and produces several desirable by-products:

• Optimizes toner usage, doubles page yield, and reduces toner cost per page.

• Increased page yield reduces the frequency of cartridge replacement by 50%, thereby reducing by half the cost and disruption caused by replacing cartridges.

• Absence of excess and loose toner on the drum reduces wear on the drum surface and on the seals to improve reliability over the cartridge?s life.

• Reduced toner depth and more uniform transfer of toner to the image drum, and then to the paper, maintains overall excellent print quality compared to HP cartridges.

Clarity Imaging Technologies, Inc. has incorporated its patented "High Efficiency Toner Transfer Technology" into a family of PageMax cartridges for Hewlett-Packard brand printers and other printers based on the Canon print engine.

The Lexmark Cartridge Story

Because Clarity Imaging Technologies was interested in providing its customers with as large a selection of improved cartridge designs as possible, it also studied cartridge designs for Lexmark International?s printers, which are number two in printer sales behind Hewlett-Packard. Lexmark manufactures some printers using Canon print engines, and these printers use the same cartridges as HP printers. Lexmark also designs and manufactures printers that are not based on the Canon print engine. Clarity studied the range of Lexmark cartridges for their non-Canon based printers to find ways to improve page yield.

The basic design of Lexmark?s cartridges is similar to Hewlett-Packard. In the Lexmark cartridge design, however, the toner tank cannot be completely filled with toner because the toner tank seal is prone to leak during shipment if too much toner is loaded into the tank.

To overcome this problem, Clarity Imaging Technologies designed a foolproof, removable toner tank seal, for which the Company has been awarded a patent. The patented seal allows additional toner to be loaded into the toner tank, without toner leakage during shipping. This results in several benefits:

• Page yields are doubled, reducing toner cost per page.

• Increased page yield reduces the frequency of cartridge replacement by 50%, thereby reducing by half the cost and disruption caused by replacing cartridges.

• High print quality is maintained.

By supplementing its HP compatible line of PageMax cartridges with a Lexmark compatible line of PageMax cartridges, PageMax can double page yield, while still maintaining unsurpassed quality, in over 85% of the installed base of laser printers in service.

Independent Lab Test Results

While the performance of PageMax cartridges has been proven by customers over the last few years, to provide further evidence supporting the performance of PageMax cartridge designs, Clarity Imaging Technologies, Inc. retained Industry Analysts, Inc., an independent Fairfield, New Jersey testing laboratory, to test and compare the page-yields and print quality produced by the new PageMax laser toner cartridge models and each corresponding HP or Lexmark cartridge model.

Test Methodology

Following is a brief overview of the methodology used by Industry Analysts, Inc.

The results of testing by Industry Analysts? engineers confirmed Clarity?s own in-house testing and customers? experience using PageMax cartridges. PageMax was found to double or more than double page yield for the same copy and printer conditions, while maintaining excellent print quality as measured by density and overall appearance.

Summaries of results for cartridges tested appear below:

Implications to Purchasing Managers and Administrators

Clarity Imaging Technologies has employed its patented PageMax technologies in over 20 cartridge models available for Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark, IBM and Canon laser printers/faxes, thus offering purchasing managers and administrators a wide selection of improved, next generation toner cartridges that significantly lower costs. PageMax cartridges offer a compelling alternative that provides unsurpassed quality/reliability while significantly lowering the direct costs of printer operation and the hidden costs of excessive cartridge handling and replacement, printer downtime and job losses.

See also: White Paper written by Camarro Research, "Understanding the Hidden Costs of Cartridge Replacement." This white paper uncovers the real costs of cartridge replacements and demonstrates how, as cartridge page yields go up, the frequency of cartridge replacements decreases along with a whole chain of other cost savings. White papers can be seen at www.clarityimaging.com