Announcement: Mega Monday Deals on Printer

We all need inks, especially with the holidays coming up.  Recipes, shopping lists, vouchers, gift tags, greeting cards, photographs and more are in popular demand as the holiday season approaches.

Don't miss this Mega Monday sale, to save on all your printer ink and toner needs. Take 25% off remanufactured or compatible ink & toner cartridges, 5% off  OEMs plus Free UK Delivery when you enter Discount Code: MEGA2011 at www.Printerinks.com

Win a Canvas of Dad!

Enter to win a Free Canvas Poster of your favourite photo with Dad!

Father’s Day has been celebrated throughout the UK, US, Canada and beyond for over 100 years. This year, Father’s Day falls on the 19th of June, and I highly recommend that you honour Dad on this day.

Celebrate the Father in your life by submitting a photo on our Facebook page or via Twitter using the hashtag #CelebrateDad

All entries need to be in by Monday 20th June 2011, when the finalists will be posted on our Facebook page. The finalists’ photo that gets the most “Likes” will win an 81 X 61cm Canvas of their Photo.

Terms & Conditions

• The Printerinks.com panel of judges will select a group of finalists and post them on our Facebook page to face the public vote.
• Final voting on the Facebook page will end on the 24th of June and the votes will be counted by the Printerinks.com panel of judges and the winner announced.
• Open to UK residents

Toner Removal

Have you ever spilled toner powder from your printer cartridge? What do you do if you spill toner in your printer, or on your clothes or skin?

If toner particles spill into your laser printer or copier, a special type of vacuum cleaner with an electrically conductive hose and a HEPA filter is needed for safe and effective cleaning. These are called electrostatic discharge-safe (ESD-safe) or toner vacuums. Toner particles have electrostatic properties by design and can develop static-electric charges when they rub against other particles, or the interiors of transport systems and vacuum cleaner hoses. Because of this and the small particle size, toner should not be vacuumed with a conventional home vacuum cleaner. Static discharge from charged toner particles can ignite dust in the vacuum cleaner bag or create a small explosion if sufficient toner is airborne. This could possibly damage the vacuum cleaner or start a fire. In addition, toner particles are so fine that they are poorly filtered by regular household vacuum cleaners and can blow through the vacuum motor and into the room. At this point you would have taken what was a small spill and created a larger mess by spreading the toner particles across the entire room.

If you shook your toner, or spilled toner into your printer, there is a strong chance that some of it got onto your clothing. Toner that has not yet fused to your clothing is easily removed in a washing machine. Because toner is a wax or plastic powder with a low melting temperature, it must be kept as cool as possible until you are able to wash it. It is best to remove the article of clothing to avoid the transfer of toner onto other surfaces and your skin. The water temperature of the wash cycle must be set to cold only. Do not wash anything else with the affected garment. Using multiple wash cycles will improve your chance of success at removing the toner. For the first cycle, you may want to use dishwasher detergent. For the additional cycles you should use regular laundry detergent. Residual toner floating in the rinse water of the first cycle may remain and necessitate multiple wash cycles. If it was a large amount of toner spilled on the garment, you may want to remove it from the washing machine and run a second cycle to remove any excess toner from the washing machine basin. Avoid using the clothes dryer or an iron until all of the toner has been removed.

If you have toner on your clothing, you may have also gotten some of it on your skin. You are going to need to follow the same principles as removing it from your clothes, avoiding heat at all costs. Your first reaction is going to be to try and brush the toner off your skin, but you do not want to do this. The act of brushing the loose toner off of your skin will result in friction, which can create heat, which could fuse the toner to your skin. Shake as much of the loose toner off as possible. Next you will want to use soap and cold water. Once again you are going to have to assure that you turn the water to cold.

If you follow these steps, you should be able to clean up any spilled toner without a problem. The next thing you will want to do is order a new toner cartridge, most likely from Printerinks.com. If you purchase our remanufactured toner cartridges, you can save yourself money and stop shaking that toner.

Where Does Toner Come From?

Every day we come across laser printers, at work, at the print shop, or we handle documents that have been printed with laser toner. The most common questions are what is toner, and how do toners and laser printers work? Why do toner cartridges cost so much, and how can I reduce my costs?

Toner is the powder used in laser printers and photocopiers to form the printed text and images on the paper. Toner granules are melted by the heat of the fuser which allows it to bind to the paper. In its early form it was simply carbon powder. In an effort to improve the quality of the printout, modern toner has the carbon particles mixed with various polymers to allow for better dispersion onto the drum.

In earlier designs, the carbon toner was poured by the user from a bottle into a reservoir in the machine. Usually a sizable amount of the toner was wasted, as it spilling always occured during the refilling process. Current machines feed directly from a sealed cartridge, which is usually a proprietary design. The specific polymer used today varies by manufacturer but can be a styrene acrylate copolymer, a polyester resin, a styrene butadiene copolymer, or a few other special polymers. Toner formulations vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and even from machine to machine. Typically formulation, granule size and melting point vary the most.

Originally, the granule size of toner averaged 14–16 micrometers. To improve image resolution, granule size was reduced, eventually reaching the current 8–10 micrometers for 600 dots per inch resolution. Further reductions in granule size producing further improvements in resolution are being developed through the application of new technologies. Toner has traditionally been made by compounding the ingredients and creating a slab which was broken or pelletised, then turned into a fine powder with a controlled granule size range by air jet milling. This process results in toner granules with varying sizes and aspherical shapes. To get a finer print, some companies are using a chemical process to grow toner granules from molecular reagents. This results in more uniform size and shapes of toner granules. The smaller, uniform shapes permit more accurate reproduction and more efficient toner use. Toner manufacturers maintain a quality control standard for granule size distribution in order to produce a powder suitable for use in their printers.

Now that you know what goes into that toner cartridge, and understand why they cost what they do, you still need to know how to reduce costs.  The price of remanufactured toner cartridges are significantly less due to conservation of cartridges.  When you purchase remanufactured toner cartridges from Printerinks.com, you help reduce the amount of cartridges that are disposed of into landfills and save yourself money at the same time!

How a Laser Printer Works

The first desktop printers were impact printers, typically dot matrix. Everyone understood how these devices worked, as they functioned just like the electric typewriters of the time. A hard object struck an ink ribbon with enough force to transfer the ink onto the page. As technology evolved, along came the next generation, which included inkjet and laser printers. The inkjet printer works just like the name implies; an image is put on the paper by using microscopic jets of ink. The laser printer, on the other hand, is a bit of a mystery. How can a highly focused beam of light impart letters and images on a piece of paper? Is the laser inside my printer dangerous?

Following are the six key processes that happen inside a laser printer when you click print.

Charging: A charge roller (or corona wire in older machines) will project an electrostatic charge onto the photoreceptor. This is a revolving drum or belt which is capable of holding an electrostatic charge on its surface as long as it hasn't been exposed to wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (and will be referred to as drum for the rest of this article).

Writing: A processor chip converts information for scanning onto the drum. The laser is aimed at a series of lenses and mirrors onto the drum. Lasers are used because they generate a coherent beam of light for a high degree of accuracy. Wherever the laser strikes the drum, it reverses the charge, thus creating a latent image on the surface.

Developing: The surface containing the latent image is exposed to toner, which is very fine particles of wax or plastic mixed with coloring agents. The charged toner particles are electrostatically attracted to the drum where the laser wrote the latent image.

Transferring: The drum is pressed or rolled over paper, transferring the image. Higher end machines use a positively charged transfer roller on the back-side of the paper to pull the toner from the photoreceptor to the paper.

Fusing: The paper passes through a fuser assembly, which has rollers that provide heat and pressure that bonds the toner to the paper.

Cleaning: When the print is complete, an electrically neutral rubber blade cleans any excess toner from the drum and deposits it into a waste reservoir, and a discharge lamp removes the remaining charge from the drum.

Each printer applies these steps in different ways. Most laser printers today actually use a linear array of light-emitting diodes to write the light on the drum. The toner is based on either wax or plastic, so that when the paper passes through the fuser assembly, the particles of toner melt. The paper may or may not be oppositely charged. The fuser can be an infrared oven, a heated pressure roller, or a xenon bulb. The warm up process that a laser printer goes through when power is initially applied to the printer consists mainly of heating the fuser element. Many printers have a toner-conservation mode which uses less toner but does yield prints with lower contrast. Color laser printers add colored toner in three additional, yet identical, processes.

So you now know that when you print that document, you are safe from an errant laser beam melting a hole in your monitor and when it is time to get a replacement for that laser toner cartridge, you need to go to Printernks.com. With your purchase of  Printerinks toner cartridges, you get a quality laser toner cartridge and save yourself money at the same time.

Choosing the best font

Different fonts use differing amounts of ink to create the same letters. The examples listed above are all the same font size and none of them have been set to bold. It becomes very obvious when you look at the examples side by side. You would potentially use less printer inks if you printed this in Calibri as opposed to Broadway or Bauhaus 93. A significant monetary savings can be found, especially for businesses and large organisations. A recent university study asked users to switch to Century Gothic for all printed documents,  "The feedback we've gotten so far has been positive…Century Gothic is very readable."

Recently a popular website tested different fonts for their ink-friendly ways, and Century Gothic and Times New Roman came out on top. Century Gothic uses approximately 30% less ink than Arial. The amounts of ink used are generally determined by the thickness of the lines. A font with ‘light’ or ‘narrow’ in its name generally uses less ink that its ‘bold’ counterpart said Thom Brown, an ink researcher with Hewlett Packard. Additionally, serif fonts, those with short horizontal strokes at the top and bottom of the characters, tend to use thinner lines and therefore less ink than a sans serif counterpart.

Now here is where things get a little confusing and not so cut and dry. While changing fonts may help you use less ink and buy fewer ink cartridges, it’s not necessarily the best decision for the environment. That’s because some fonts that use less ink are also wider. A document that’s approximately one page in length in the Arial font could possibly extend onto a second page when printed with Century Gothic. UW-Green Bay said research suggests that the monetary cost of ink is the main cost of a printout. The environmental cost of the additional paper used when printing with these reduced ink fonts is higher. Maybe the individual characters use less ink, but if you're using more paper, that's not so green, is it?

Other tips for reducing printing costs includes printing in ‘draft mode’ whenever possible and re-use and print on both sides of a piece of paper for those drafts. Always use print preview to eliminate wasting pages on useless text, like unwanted images and copyright lines. The use of an ink saving font is just another technique when you’re trying to consider the environmental impact of your printing habits.

So what is the best way to save on printing costs and help the environment? Simple, buy remanufactured inks and toners. The use of remanufactured printer inks helps to reduce the number of empty cartridges that are disposed of into landfills. Our high quality, low cost remanufactured cartridges are great for both the environment and your bottom line.

The Printer Glossary

Have you ever wondered what PictBridge, OEM, Remanufactured Cartridge or Pantone mean?  In an effort to assist with all your printer needs, we have assembled this Printer Glossary below.  Feel free to print and bookmark for reference.

All-in-One (AIO) - This is a multifunction printer that can also scan and copy. Many of these devices can send and receive faxes as well. These are sometimes referred to as multi function printers.

Anti-Aliasing - The process of removing or reducing the jagged distortions in curves and diagonal lines so that lines appear smooth or smoother.

Auto Answer - This is a setting on most fax machines, fax modems and multifunction devices with fax capability. With auto answer, the device automatically picks up incoming fax calls after a specified number of rings.

Automatic Document Feeder - A tray and/or attachment that feeds one page at a time into a fax, copier, printer or scanner.

Bit - The abbreviation for binary digit; the smallest unit of digital information, represented by 1 or 0. Computers use many bits to represent information.

Bit Depth - A digital image is represented as a bit-map (a grid of dots). Bit Depth is the number of colour tones that can be associated with each dot. A 1-bit colour, for example, can only contain 2 colours: black and white. But an 8-bit colour contains 256 shades (colour or gray), while a 24-bit colour contains 16.7 million shades.

Bitmap File - The standard graphics format carries the file extension .BMP.

Borderless Printing - Printing photos with no white space around the edges. Borderless prints look like the high quality prints from a photo lab.

Brightness - An adjustment to control the lightness and darkness of an image, measured by the percentage of reflected light.

Broadcast Faxing - A fax machine feature found on most all-in-ones that sends the same fax documents to multiple recipients.

Carriage - The fixture in the print device that holds the print head. Generally travels along carriage rods from side to side.

Central Processing Unit (CPU) – This is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, and is the primary element carrying out the computer's functions. The central processing unit carries out each instruction of the program in sequence, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system.

Charging Roller - One of the complex systems of rollers inside a typical laser printer or all-in-one. The charging roller transfers an electrical charge to the photo conductor, which repels particles to the toner.

CMYK - An acronym to represent cyan, magenta, yellow and black, the basic colorants (dyes, pigments or toners) used in digital imaging. These four colours alone are used to create all colours in an image.

Collation - A feature offered on some inkjet printers and laser printers. With collation turned on, multiple copies of a document are printed as separate documents.

Compatible Cartridges - A brand new printer cartridge that is made by a third party, not the OEM by the original printer manufacturer.  Compatible cartridges are widely known as a trusted, affordable option when purchased from trusted companies like Printerinks.com.

Contrast Enhancement (Automatic) - Automatically brightens images that appear dark or hazy, and applies appropriate tone correction to deliver improved quality and clarity.

Corona Wires - A set of thin wires inside the body of a laser printer that transfers a static charge to each sheet of paper; this charge in turn attracts the toner to the paper.

Dedicated Print Server - A computer in a network dedicated to managing all available printers.

Dot Matrix - An older impact printer that used a grid of tiny pins to transfer ink from a ribbon to the page. Dot matrix printers can produce basic graphics, but have inferior print quality compared to inkjet or laser printers.

Dots Per Inch (DPI) - A measurement of print resolution. DPI indicates how many individual dots a device can address on a page per square inch of area. DPI is typically listed as horizontal resolution by vertical resolution.

Driver - Software that comes with a peripheral that allows the peripheral to communicate with the computer.

Duplex - Printing both sides of a two-sided document on a single sheet of paper.

Drum unit - The photoreceptor in a laser printer which is electrically charged, rotating and  coated with organic photo conductors.  The drum picks up toner and then prints the image onto paper by direct contact and heat, which fuses the ink to the paper.

Enhanced Capability Port (ECP) - This is an international specification describing bidirectional communications using a computer's parallel port. ECP focuses on printers and scanners.

Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) - An international standard documenting bidirectional communications using a computer’s parallel port. EPP focuses on peripherals other than printers and scanner.

Ethernet Network - The simplest, slowest and least expensive network design, usually well-suited for home or small offices.

Fax Forwarding - A fax feature that enables the machine to automatically forward any document it receives to another fax.

Fax Header - An informational line of text printed at the top of every page by a fax machine; it includes a name, station ID and fax number.

FireWire - High-speed external connection used for connecting peripherals, also referred to as "IEEE 1394".

Firmware - Low-level software that runs in a digital camera, printer, scanner, etc. and controls the product's operation and user interface.

Font - A set of printing characters that share the same distinctive appearance. Fonts are used on a computer to display text on the monitor and print documents.

Fuser Roller - One of a system of rollers inside a laser printer. The fuser roller heats the page after the toner is applied, so the toner partially melts and sticks to the page for a permanent bond.

GIF Image - Short for Graphics Interchange Format; usually carries the file extension .GIF. The first truly universal standard format for file images, originally developed by CompuServe. Widely used on the web, GIF files are best used for small images in limited colours.

IEEE-1284 Standard - The international design specification for bidirectional parallel printer cables. Most inkjet and laser printers do not work properly unless the printer cable meets this specification. Most products now use USB for printer-to-computer communication.

Impact Printer - A class of printer that uses the force of an impact into an ink ribbon to create a printed character on a page. This impact is delivered by a rotating ball or wheel or through a grid of pins. This type of printer is generally slow, noisy and out-dated. These printers are useful for multipart forms such as invoices or shipping bills.

Individual Ink Cartridges (IIC) - Some inkjet manufacturers printing solution that has a different ink cartridge for each colour.

InfraRed (IR) - This is a type of connection that allows data to be wirelessly transmitted from one device directly to another device when the infrared window on the camera is lined up with an infrared sensor on the other device. This technology is similar to what most TV remote controls use.

Inkjet Cartridge - An inkjet cartridge is a replaceable component of an inkjet printer that contains the liquid ink (and sometimes a print head, micro-chip and other technology and moving parts).

Inkjet Printer - A printer or an all-in-one unit that shoots fast-drying ink through tiny nozzles onto a page to form characters. The inkjet is currently the standard for personal computer printing. Inkjets are fast, affordable and quiet. They provide high-quality graphics and print in colour.

Input/Output Card - Usually abbreviated I/O card. A standard computer adapter card that typically provides two serial ports for your modem and two parallel printer ports.

Interrupt Request - Usually abbreviated IRQ. A signal generated by an adapter card in the computer that alerts the CPU to handle incoming data from the keyboard, mouse, serial port or parallel port.

JPEG File - Usually carries the file extension .JPG. The current favorite image format among web surfers and graphics professionals, JPEG images are highly compressed to save more space than a .BMP or .GIF file.

Label Stock - A paper sheet carrying peel-off or perforated labels that are arranged in a specified pattern and often used for mailing.

Landscape Printing - Printing where the longer length of the page runs from side to side rather than top to bottom. Landscape mode is often used to print spreadsheets and larger photographs.

Large-format Printer - An inkjet printer designed to handle paper larger than stard A4. Some large-format printers also use continuous rolls of paper. These printers are generally designed to produce photo-quality posters, blueprints, maps, banners and signs.

Laser Printer – This is a device that uses static electricity and heat to bond particles of toner to the page to create the characters. This is the same technology used by many copy machines and is known as a best option for large businesses.

Local Area Network (LAN) - A group of computers in an office or building connected to one another by cabling. A network computer can access files on other computers in the network or enable others to open and use its files. Printers, modems and hard drives are also typically shared peripherals on a network.

Media - The material that the ink is printed upon, such as plain paper, mailing labels or transparency film.

Monochrome Printer - A printer that prints in only one colour, usually black. Some monochrome printers can also produce text and graphics in shades of gray, as well as strict black-and-white.

Network Interface Card (NIC) - An adapter card installed in a computer that enables it to connect to a network; most NICs support several different types of networks and network cabling.

Network Printer – This is a printer available for use by all of the workstations on a network. A network printer either has its own built-in network interface card or it is connected to a printer server on the network.

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) - Products or components that are manufactured or purchased by a company and retailed under that company's brand name.

Page Description Language - A language recognised by computers and printers that define the physical characteristics of a page, including fonts, graphics, margins, spacing and colours.

Page Memory - The number of pages a fax can hold in its memory if it runs out of paper.

Pages Per Minute (PPM) - A measurement of printer speed, indicating how many finished pages a printer can produce over a 60 second period. PPM speeds are typically listed for both black-only and mixed text and colour documents.

Page Storage – This is the number of pages (text or graphics) that can be stored internally on the given device.

Pantone - A colour matching system supported by most desktop publishing and graphics design software.

Paper Capacity - Refers to how much paper the printer tray can accommodate.

Paper Guides - Adjustable plastic dividers that help hold paper in the proper alignment in a printer's paper feed tray. These guides can be moved to fit different dimensions, such as international sizes, envelopes or custom-sized paper.

Parallel Port - This is the common name for one type of printer connector on the back of a typical computer. I/O adapter cards are available that can provide a computer with up to four separate parallel ports, but most computers come with one as standard equipment.

Peripheral - This is a device attached to a host computer, but not part of it, and is more or less dependent on the host. It expands the host's capabilities, but does not form part of the core computer architecture.

Peer-to-Peer Network - A simple network design that uses no file or printer servers. All workstations on the network are connected by cabling, which enables users to share files and hardware, such as printers.

PictBridge - PictBridge allows digital cameras, camcorders and other image-capture devices to connect and print directly to photo printers and other output devices; no computer is required.

Pixel - A single element within a digital photograph. The typical digital photograph is made up of several million pixels.

Port Connection - A communication link between hardware components. Types of connections include FireWire, Parallel, USB, Serial, and SCSI.

Port Polling - A procedure performed by Windows® each time the computer is booted and each time a print job is sent from an application. The operating system automatically checks the parallel port to make sure that a printer is ready to receive a print job. In many cases, port polling can be turned off to improve printing speed.

Print Buffer - A separate, standalone print spooler with its own built-in memory that connects a computer and printing hardware. The print buffer can spool print jobs, freeing up all of a computer's resources for applications.

Printer Cartridge - The device that integrates the print head, ink container and ink delivery systems.  A printer cartridge may contain ink or toner.

Printer Driver - The software that enables the operating system to properly build and format commands and data bound for the printer; in effect, a printer driver tells the operating system all it needs to know to successfully operate the printer.

Printer Emulation - This is software that enables a newer printer to act like an older, widely used printer so it can recognise and print documents formatted for that older model.

Printer Server - A computer solely dedicated to supporting a network printer. The server's system RAM and hard drive are used to store print jobs in the queue, and print jobs can be reordered, paused, or deleted from the server's keyboard.

Print Head - This is the element of a printer that applies the ink to the paper. In an inkjet device, the print head contains the nozzles and electronics that control the ejection of the ink onto the selected media.

Print Quality - A qualitative description of how pleasing printed output looks. Most printers enable the user to adjust the quality of print and the speed of printing. In general for inkjet printers, slower print speeds will result in higher print quality.

Print Resolution - The quantity of data capable of being printed, typically measured in dots per inch (DPI). Higher resolution is one of many factors that can improve print quality.

Queue - A sequence of documents sent to a printer to be processed sequentially, usually in the order in which they were sent by the computer.

Remanufactured Cartridge - Printerinks.com remanufactured cartridges are made from recycled cartridge cores. Each cartridge is cleaned, inspected and refilled to meet or exceed OEM specifications. Remanufactured cartridges from Printerinks.com contain the same amount of ink or more as the OEM ink cartridges, and print the same number of pages.  Remanufactured cartridges are widely recognised as a more affordable and environmentally friendly option, keeping empty cartridges out of landfills

Serial Port - This is the common name for one type of printer connector on the back of a typical computer. This is a physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time.

Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) - Set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices.

Thermal Dye Sublimation - In dye-sublimation printing, the dyes vaporize and permeate the glossy surface of the paper before they return to solid form, creating a gentle gradation at the edges of each pixel. The colour infuses the paper and is less vulnerable to fading and distortion over time.

Tri-Chamber Cartridge – This is a descriptive term for a singular inkjet cartridge that contains all three colours of ink; cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY).  Often marketed as a tri-colour cartridge.

Universal Serial Bus (USB) - A fast input/output (I/O) data transfer standard used for connecting peripherals to a computer. Typically, each device connected to a computer uses its own port. USB can connect up to 127 peripherals through a single port, and peripherals can be connected together. USB devices may be hot swapped, which means that power does not have to be turned off to connect or disconnect a peripheral. USB has become the primary means of connection for printers and other peripherals, and is supported by most major hardware, software and telecommunications providers.