Printer

Not unless you buy utter garbage. They tend to be of a lower quality than the original cartriges and are frequently a mess and a pain, but they work. I generally just spend the extra bucks for the original carts, but if you're on a tight budget, then they'll get you printing.

Good luck.

They have no net effect on the printer itself.

They do however tend to make a mess of the insides of printers. Both ink cartridges (tend to leak and dump a lot into the resting bin) and refilled toner cartridges ten do develop leaks and leave black streaks on the paper.

If you are talking about toner refills and black streaks, you may be able to send back to the refiller (re-manufacturer) however and get a replacement -- because these are supposed to work for the life of the toner.

If you clean out the printer thouroughly, then the printer itself will not develop problems because of refilled merchandise.

Have to disagree. I've repaired many printers that was damaged from using bad toner cartridges.

Often the toner leaks. Toner is conductive and when a pile builds up in the wrong place zap there goes the high voltage system. Another problem with leaking toner is it can get into the drive train and can damage the gears. The toner company is supposed to empty the waste hooper, change the gears and replace the corona wire, most of this is rarely done. A worn gear can cause the cartridges to freeze up and again can damage the drive train. A fualty corona can cause image problems. The toners are different for various printers. There is a specific amount that is supposed to be put in. Some of the toners or developers have lubricants. Some companies just use generic toner and use the same for all the cartridges.

On jet printers leaking ink can be a real pain to clean up. The printer has to totally disasembled the ink oozes all over the place. This is a very time consuming job and expensive. I've had customers give up on a printer and get a new one just because they wanted to save a few bucks buying ink. Damaged contacts can short out the logic and again the printer might as well be dumped in the trash.

I have purchased and supported hundreds of HP laser printers in my lifetime. The only time I have ever seen any problems with the QUALITY of the printed document is when the user has been using a remanufactured cartidge.

Much depends on the print cartridges itself. For some printer brands, the printhead is on the cartridges whereas other printers might have printhead sitting in the printer. Hence, if you used refill ink on those cartridges w/printhead, it can damagethe printhead and short-circuit the board as refill ink does cause ink leakage easily. Hope this helps. cheers, Pauline :)

This question was closed by the author