Replacing a Canon printer with a Brother Laser?

A point to question in choosing a 3-in-1 printer.

Verify the claimed paper size!

An HP Deskjet 1510 handles most of my printing, and both its scanner and printer do handle A4 as claimed.

Its main drawback is that it won't take pattern and refilled cartridges. If I try, it accuses me of fitting counterfeits and although it goes through the motions, it will not put ink on paper.

I purchased an HP OfficeJet 7510, mainly for CAD work but also to copy a lot of A3 originals.

Unfortunately its packaging and advertising proved deceitful. It will print A3 sheets as claimed, but not scan up to that size. Nor is it is just the swept area that is under-size: an A3 sheet overhangs the copier glass in both directions.

I do not know how general such failings are among the main makes and models of printers, but it is evidently one to watch for.

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It is also very difficult to know what printed sizes these machines will actually give from a CAD screen image. Though it's probably as much my fault as its, I do not expect genuine full-size or integer-scale drawings on ISO-standard paper, in inches or mm, with correct dimensions; when printing combines Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and IMSI Design equipment and software that all default to old, USA-only, paper sizes.

Could be wrong but I thought they made it illegal years ago for printer manufacturers to do that (block printing with third party cartridges). Or perhaps that was just this side of the pond.

It also seems odd to me that the printer would flag refilled cartridges but continue to go through the motions of printing with them while surpressing the ink flow. Are you sure you properly unsealed the cartridges?

In any event, my HP laser suddenly started nagging me about my refilled cartridge a while back .... but not refusing to print. Just a nuisance to have to cancel the nag each time. I finally discovered that I could turn off these warnings in the printer properties.

Perhaps there is something similar in your case?

BTW "USA only" should read "North America only" (and for all i Know, South America) .... and we think your paper sizes are funny too

Edited By Peter Greene on 09/04/2021 18:50:14

I have a Brother HL-3150CDW colour laser printer and I'd certainly recommend it. It works well, is quite robustly made (it would be OK for light business use), and you can refill the toner cartridges:

https://www.urefilltoner.co.uk/

After printing 1071 A4 pages (assorted monochrome text, colour images, etc), it has 20% of the colour toners remaining and I've refilled the black toner once (fairly recently). As the above website explains, you can get some extra mileage out of them just by resetting the cartridge - I haven't done that with the colour ones yet, with the black one, I added some toner while the cartridge was out of the machine to be reset.

There's an easy-to-use Linux driver installer on the Brother website - don't try to do it the hard way (says the voice of experience).

This should help. regards

From inkntoner website:-

How to turn off HP Cartridge Protection Setting!

You can turn off the HP cartridge protection setting in a few simple steps.

If your Hewlett-Packard printer does not have any internet features you can simply go into your printer settings which can be located on your printer menu and you will see the option to disable the HP cartridge protection. Just select the disable option and click Apply and Save if necessary.

If your printer has internet features:

1. Open up a web browser and enter your printer’s IP address on the web address. Your printer’s IP address can be found on your printer settings by navigating your way to network setup options.
2. This will open up the printer’s Embedded Web Server, click on the Settings option and to the left hand side select HP Cartridge Protection.
3. Make sure you select Disable HP Cartridge Protection and click Apply or Save.

Edited By Oldiron on 09/04/2021 21:49:01

... but discontinued according to Brother (warning very "live" site)

Having got fed up with inkjets with their insatiable demands for ink and tendencies to clog up if not exercised regularly, I have just bought a Xerox B205 mono laser from printerland .

I've had it for only a couple of days but it seems like a nice machine, and a bit of a bargain at £130 including a 1500 page toner cartridge.

Good things are that it has support for WSD and AirPrint protocols, so should be OK with any recent Microsoft or Apple operating system.

I use Linux and the only bad thing I've found so far is that the Xerox Linux driver is a step or three behind the printer's capabilities. But that can be fixed!

Oh - and it prints, copies and scans well!

Might be worth a look?

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 10/04/2021 02:06:06

Edited By Robin Graham on 10/04/2021 02:16:25

Edited By Robin Graham on 10/04/2021 02:32:32

On the subject of Laser Colour Printers, I checked these out when the low price ones first came out and it seemed that they were OK for documents but not good for phtographs etc. So I went the inkjet route.

That was quite some years ago now though and I haven't really looked at them since. So how good are the current crop of lower-priced colour laser printers at handling graphics images ... particularly photographs?

Unfortunately the process seems to be intrinsically inferior to inkjet - the colours are muddier, and the tonal range is limited. It might help to experiment with different types and grades of paper.

I used to operate an expensive Canon colour laser years ago at work and it was very good at colour graphics but still not as good as an Inkjet for colour photos. They were passable in things like documents though.

After posting, I found this which is quite informative.

I was, and may still consider, going from ink-jet to laser printer, at least for the A3 printing I want for CAD drawings. So this thread's useful to me for gaining some comparisons.

Peter -

I think I have found a work-round, published by a supplier of both OEM and pattern / refilled inks.

The printer manufacturers can't stop you using pattern or refilled cartridges outright, but they make it hard to do so. Some at least use a very craftily-worded question whose "obvious" answer results in the software disabling the refilled or supposedly-counterfeit cartridge.

BTW _ British paper sizes aren't British. They are metric and designed by the International Standards Organisation!

Oldiron -

Thank you. I'll have a look at that.

As I said previously I use a colour A4 for general text and in addition I have a A3+ inkjet for colour photo use. The inkjet is an Epson fitted with refillable cartridges which after the initial purchase works out reasonable per print. Inkjets aimed at photographic use have more cartridges most have eight or nine to give better tonal range when used with photo papers. I wouldn’t recommend a laser for anything more than document printing and the occasional no critical photo picture. In the past I have had an A2 Canon photo printer but when these go wrong it’s cheaper to buy another than repair and they only work with Canon cartridges at £70 per cartridge x8. Printing is a minefield take the cheapest option that you will use and get larger prints done commercially, you can get an A3 high quality photo print for nt much more than a £1 from specialist printers.