(Refilling a C7553x cartridge for the HP 2015 printer)

Printers are great. But, toner can get expensive. There's a place around the corner from me that will remanufacture my empty cartridge for about half the price of buying a new one from HP. They even put a new drum and chip into the cartridge. Which is great, accept for the fact that I'm not sure I really needed a new drum -- it was printing fine, just out of toner. And, I've set the printer's driver to continue printing indefinitely despite page count -- so I don't really need a new chip. I've also purchased reman'd carts online. In general, both these options were always better than buying new brand names despite the fact that results weren't always picture perfect. But, I was very curious about the third option, the do-it-yourself most-money-saving option -- buying the toner and refilling myself.

I got my toner refill kit through 123refills.com The hole-maker is really just a soldering iron with an adapted tip which looks like a copper thimble. I wondered if I could just order the thimble part and slide it into the tip of my cheap radio shack soldering iron. But for the price, it really wasn't worth the risk. After all, I want to be able to review this process for you as true as possible.

Frankly, I could have used a little more handholding in the directions. Despite the fact that I'm not a first-timer to do-it-yourself, I still would have liked the tone of the copytext to be more re-assuring and appreciative of my apprehension. Also, because of some reading online, I'd expected to have to empty the "bad" or "used" toner. But the directions spoke nothing of it. And at the end of the day, the directions did tell me how to do it.

I heat up the hole-maker for over 5 minutes, placed it where I was told and it melted the plastic. It took longer than I'd expected and actually went in deeper than I'd expected before the circle broke off. Silly me, thinking the plastic must have been thicker, I wiggled the thing a bit. Bad idea, made the hole bigger than necessary. But, in the end it worked. The 1/3 inch (or so) circle of plastic broke off inside the copper-thimble of the hole-maker. This process is smelly, so open all the windows. I took a flashlight and looked inside the hole for left over toner -- nope. Screwed the funnel top on the toner and started to drop it in. Again, my impatience (or poor expectations) caused me to make another error. I kept trying to figure the best way to make the stuff pour. Just a little jiggle caused the toner to spill. It was a very little spill, but that stuff can travel! Best you know, it's very very fine, you can even see it take to the air like smoke or dust. Next time I'm going to wear a dust mask over my mouth and nose.

Since, the cartridge in question (HP 7553x) is a high-yielder -- it took the whole bottle of toner (after some jostling to get the pile of toner inside clear of the hole above). I capped the hole and then spent a good 20 minutes carefully wiping spilled toner from the outside of the cart with TP, water, and Q-tips. Luckily, none of it fell on the drum -- though it did get close. Next time, I'll use masking tape to cover the opening that leads to the drum nearest the hole.

I was smart enough to cover the floor (my work area) with scrap paper, but not smart enough to put it in the right place. A small amount of the toner made it to the carpet. Since it was so fine, I thought I could sprits it with water then lightly dab it up with TP. Nope. I worried about using the vacuum though, since I was afraid I'd just be rubbing toner all over my house from then on. Probably best to pick up a dustbuster just for toner refilling. *** Just read on wiki that using an ordinary vac for toner can actually be dangerous -- toner vac's made specifically for toner are recommended. ***

Once the cart was clean, I slapped a bit of postal tape over the cap just to make sure none of that stuff darted out of my slightly oversized hole. I decided to test my work before swapping out the chips. Surprisingly -- it worked just fine. The quality of the print was identical to the last good page printed from the cart before refill. Actually, the print looks quite good - dark, strong - no smears, no excess or gray on the paper. I even rubbed my fingers on it to see if it would come off -- nope. It seems to hold as well as prior.

Of course, I'm still curious to know what kind of page count I'll get out of this fill, but at this point -- I'm happy. It feels good to take control and save yourself some money. I'll be toner-refilling again.

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