10 Facts You Didn’t Know About Office Printers
by Chelsea Camper | Last Updated December 30, 2015Do you have a printer sitting with you in your office? How much do you know about it? Do you know how much it costs to make an ink or toner cartridge for it? How much electricity does it take to run it?
The answers to some of these questions may surprise you!
- When you buy an inkjet printer, the cartridges that come with it are only half filled. This is done to 1) keep the ink from spilling during shipment and 2) to encourage you to buy ink quicker. Companies that make inkjet printers usually sell them at or below cost (meaning they don’t make much, if any, money off of the sale of the actual printer), their money is made when you start to buy ink from them.
- A gallon of inkjet ink is over four thousand ($4,000) dollars. This article from Times compares several different liquids to the cost of gas, one of which is printer ink. This was written back in 2008. It is now estimated that a gallon of ink is closer to $4,700 dollars.The cost of that nice laser printer doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?
- Toner cartridges can have a big impact on the environment. A recent infographic from InkTechnologies states: “It takes one gallon of fossil oil to produce each laser printer cartridge.” “Toner cartridges can be recycled up to 4 times.” See the rest of the Recycle Your Toner Cartridges! Infographic.
- When printing, laser printer fusers can get up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. This heat is what melts the toner onto the paper.
- Low levels of warmth, such as warm water or the Summer sun, can cause toner to start to melt. Never try to use warm water to get toner off of your skin or clothes as this will cause it to start melting.
- Some laser printers can use up to 3x more power while printing than a running desktop computer. The average desktop computer (computer and monitor combined) takes between 100-300 watts to run. When printing, a laser printer can use up to 700 watts while printing.
- Toner is made up of tiny plastic particles (which is why laser printers have to get so hot, it takes a lot of heat to melt these particles). These tiny particles are called “polymers.”
- You can buy special inks that are edible. This may also require you to buy a different printer if edible inks aren’t designed for your printer.
- In each inkjet cartridge there is a tiny computer chip that monitors the ink level in the cartridge. When the ink gets low it will prompt you to either replace it, buy a new one, or buy a new one and replace it or you won’t be able to print anything. There are some ink cartridges that you can reset the computer chip to give you a more accurate level of ink left in the cartridge.
- The printer company Brother recycles enough toners each year to protect enough trees to give every Koala left in Australia 2.6 trees each.
Do you have any interesting printer facts youd like to share?
Looking to buy a new printer? Find out what you’ll need to consider when purchasing a new printer!
Image: MJ/TR (®???)
