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New toner cartridges are 20% full and report themselves empty at 15%. What's going on? [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2022-12-01

We all knew inkjet printer cartridges were an outright scam, but sadly it seems that the makers of laser toner cartridges have some explaining to do as well. Lumafield scanned a new one and an "empty" one with an industrial CT machine and reports that the new one was sold 20% full and the "empty" one still had 15% in the tank.

What we found shocked us: not only was the empty one not really empty, but the full cartridge was far from full! With the help of the automated measurements tool in Voyager—our browser-based industrial CT analysis software—we found that right out of the box, only about 20% of the space inside the cartridge reservoir is occupied by toner. A cartridge deemed "empty" by the printer has only slightly less toner, about 15%. That 5% range seems to represent the entire capacity of the cartridge. But what exactly is inside?

Scanning deadstock from the 1980s/1990s as a control, perhaps, might be in order.

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2022/12/01/new-toner-cartridges-are-20-full-and-report-themselves-empty-at-15-whats-going-on.html

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