Optimizing your printer
ncannasse.fr
ncannasse.fr
Also, he's lucky the printer decided to go with it, he could have easily gotten a "No toner detected" message.
my guess would be, that the window is used to determine the filling level inside the toner by shining light / laser through it. he says there are windows on both sides.
if the cartridge is emtpy light goes through, if not it's stopped. so closing the windows would work.
replacing the cartridge could trigger a check wether it's full or not. if the printer thinks it is a full cartridge, the page count is reset and it'll print again.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in another 1500 pages - what exactly will the printer compare to, and will you be able to reset?
I've had a three models of Brother laser printers, and each one did this. On each one I covered the window with tape and on each one I printed for a long time after. It is, the only real flaw I've found in getting a Brother laser printer over some of the more expensive options.
I'm not sure if Brother is being deliberately evil - I think it's more likely a matter of not having a cheap way to measure toner remaining and knowing a given cartridge is good for 1500 "average" page prints. The profit margins on new cartridges probably helped encourage them to not spend a lot of R&D on a more robust toner check method.
It's probably like you suggest - if the cartridge is inserted and is "full" of toner the printer assumes the cartridge is new and it resets the counter for the typical output.
If Brother had simply added an option on the printer to ignore the low toner warning, this would be a decent feature - warn me when I'm probably about to run out, but let me continue printing until I'm entirely empty. That way I'd have time to order a new cartridge but still probably be able to print for a while after getting the warning.
This particular "hack" is pretty well covered over the internet.
Exactly; I've done the same trick with Brother toner cartridges for quite awhile now by using black electrician's tape. The sensor is just an optical fill check, there is no communication going on between between the toner cartridge and printer (although the cost of the official cartridge could make you think it's capable).
On an older model I had it was easy to refill them myself using a DIY kit from Costco. These days I can buy 3rd party cartridges pretty cheaply and they work fine (and are probably worth it to avoid the mess of DIY refills).
For HP and Lexmark printers where the head is built into the cartridge, it obviously isn't an issue, but for Canon and Epson I'm more hesitant to do so.
Just look on the Amazon pages for the toner of your Brother cartridge and you should see tons of reviewers complaining about the same thing and getting the advice you just posted.
http://www.nrdy.ch/2011/05/07/printer-hacking-101-reset-your...
I reset the original cartridge the second time now and it's printing like the first page.
A dark marker or one that dispenses paint would likely be useful for this.
There's an optical sensor. When it triggers, a significant quantity of toner remains in the cartridge. Cover the cartridge's window, and it looks like it's still full of toner. You can get dozens or perhaps a few hundred additional pages, depending on what you print.
BTW, this class of Brother has a reputation for being trouble-free (well, one odd day-of-the-week driver bug that I'm aware of) including in *NIX environments, while being dirt cheap if you look for sales. A 2270W network printer having Ethernet, USB, and wireless occasionally drops to $80. You're left deciding whether to purchase a new toner cartridge or an entire new printer (albeit with a lower-capacity "starter" cartridge).
These days, you can get a color laser for a couple of hundred. But if you're cranking out a lot of black and white, one of these Brothers makes a good "beater" printer.
(The one caveat being the eventual drum replacement. If your printing is really high volume, you might want to look for something with a more durable drum -- although again I think people manage to take Brothers past their official metrics.)
I agree, the thing is built like a tank. It's not the fastest machine in the world, and it's about as elegant as Kryten from Red Dwarf's head, images are an indistinct mass of foggy grey, but for what I do, churning out black and white text documents, the quality is perfect. It works flawlessly under Ubuntu too. You can't argue with the price, either--but even if you can't nick one from a skip, they're about £20 used.
(I've been beaten in the "beater" printer category, though. The workplace I left this week has an HP LaserJet 5 of a 1995 vintage still clunking away in the corner printing news scripts for the radio, with a page count in the 300,000s. I believe it could soon be coming to the end of its life, though, not because it's knackered, but because they've stopped selling the cartridges. I love using old tech like this, for some reason.)
Actually, I'm reminded that a relative has a 4MP purchased... a decade or more ago?, that is still chugging along just fine. It's awfully slow by today's standards, but -- while small and designed for the SOHO -- it is indeed "built like a tank", for the most part.
By the way, the Brother 2[1|2]40, 70, etc. look all right, and their image quality is ok (for a basic B/W printer -- don't expect an Ansel Adams print ;-).