Flag gear on toner cartridge for more life? Brother laser

[GoodEnough]

Not sure of the best place for this, so here goes:

Brother HL-2270DW Laser printer
Starter cartridge just ran out (rather, toner light went on)

I don't think it's out of toner. It's just a page count limiter
I installed this "flag gear" for $7
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350478356636

However, I still get the toner light, and still can not print.

I thought the reason I bought the flag gear was to bypass the page count.
There is clearly toner left in here, b/c the pages were printing perfectly still.

What am I supposed to do?

 

[mindless1]

For others/future reference, usually all that is needed is to buy the white gear, not the housing and spring which are reusable, so only the white gear adds about $2 to $3 to the price of bulk toner when bought together.

The first thing to do when you get a low toner indicator is to use a piece of opaque tape to cover the optical sensor window. With a flashlight you should easily be able to see it on the side of the cavity the cartridge slides in, or on some models it is easier to put it on the cartridge itself.

You can leave the reset gear as it is now, but if/when the time comes to refill the cartridge, do then reset that gear back to the starting position again. Also, especially when mixing toner that came from different sources it is good to dump out all the remaining old toner when you go to refill with new toner. I usually wrap a trash bag around the end of the cartridge to minimize the mess (and do it outside).

I mention this because on those Brother printers it's not really worth the hassle to bother with the tape trick, just to shake the cartridge a little to even out the toner and print for a while, repeating this a couple times, then give up on the rest of the remaining toner as a two pack of bulk refills is only about $12 delivered so you are only throwing out maybe 25 cents worth of toner, and often that last little bit is of inferior particle size and a little contaminated so print quality was dropping.

 

[FeuerFrei]

Glad you asked ... here's some info from the printer's User Manual on the disc that came with your Brother HL-2270DW.

- To force the machine to continue printing after the LEDs indicate REPLACE TONER, press Go Seven times to enter Continue mode (all the LEDs flash twice, and then the Ready LED turns on). The machine will continue printing until the LEDs indicate TONER ENDED.

- To return to the default setting (Stop mode), press Go seven times (all the LEDs flash once).

- Once you reach TONER ENDED condition, as indicated by LEDs, the machine stops printing until you replace the toner cartridge with a new one.

- When you replace the toner cartridge with a new one, the machine returns to Ready mode.

 

[mindless1]

^ What you have posted seems to be a poor english translation that is describing a condition where the reset gear has ended its travel and the problem showing up on LEDs indicating replace toner, has nothing yet to do with the LED sensor in the body of the printer.

I state this because it also reads that there is a 2nd condition when it still indicates a lower level of toner is sensed, with the only way it could do that being the last measure of having the LED sensor optically sense it.

The cartridges are not microchipped or fused so the only way the printer could know, or assume a new cartridge is installed is to go from a prior state of the reset gear having completed its travel, or the optical LED sensor sensing, to a new state of having the reset gear returned to a non-empty position or the sensor LED no longer sensing low toner. I mention this because of the two, GoodEnough has already done one of these things.

However, only GoogEnough can confirm that when the new rest gear was installed, that it was installed in the correct position, how it would be at the start of using a new cartridge, not in the same position the old gear was in when it was removed.

In other words the reset gear purchase doesn't really have anything to do with resetting the cartridge. A person could just reset the original gear, return it to its original position of travel and reuse it, but until the gear is replaced the printer won't realize there is a regular capacity cartridge load of toner in it instead of a starter cartridge toner load, so it would need reset in between toner refills instead of only once per toner refill.

 

[FeuerFrei]

I know, I'm not sure what this TONER ENDED state is and how it's indicated by LEDs. AFAIC I stop printing when the output goes to crap. I'm not at work ATM so cannot refer to the manual.

This guy's engaging in needless futzing with gears - just put the printer in Continue Mode and continue printing with low ink.

I.E. Hit Go button 7 times and *bam* get on with life.

 

[mindless1]

^ I took it to mean that it is displayed on an LCD screen when they wrote LEDs.

The gear change is helpful when trying to reuse a starter cartridge and wanting to refill it with the full capacity load of toner a regular cartridge has, though after a certain point it will need a hole in the reclaimed toner chamber to empty that out and then that hole plugged... at least, I don't recall that chamber having a plug or being able to take out screws to empty it.