Use by dates of laser toner cartridges

[Binoculars]

Put simply, I have come into possession of , err, several laser toner cartridges of various brands; Canon, IBM, Xerox, Lexmark etc. All are unopened in the original packaging, but some are past the use by date stamped on the box. I propose to sell them at prices way below wholesale.

Does anybody know, rather than guessing, whether their useability is affected?

[vancouv]

I've just had an issue with out of date cartridges. I was very dubious as I always think the manufacturers are trying to force you to buy something you don't really need.......

But I was having a problem with the colours on my printer (Epson R800) being very dodgy, particularly when printing high quality photos. Having exhausted just about everything else, in desperation I replaced the cartridges that were out of date, as it suggested doing that in the troubleshooting tips - although some get used up quite quickly, others hardly ever need replacing. They were out of date by about a year.

And hey presto, colours are now perfect. So in my case the use by date did seem to be significant.

[hellsbrink]

It's impossible to tell unless you can try at least one of them.

What's likely to happen is that the toner will have "clumped" and that means it won't come out evenly so you get blank spots and/or big lumps of raw toner on the page. One POSSIBLE cure is to give the toner cartridges a darn good shake before they are unpacked and installed, same as you do with a pot of salt/herbs/whatever to get rid of all the lumps so it flows better.

But the risk is entirely yours, they may not work.

(Oh, Vancouv. ALWAYS make sure inkjet cartridges are "in date". They simply will not work properly otherwise as the ink basically "clots" and there is nowt you can do to cure that)

[Saab Dastard]

Binos,

I can tell you that some cartridges work fine YEARS after their sell-by date! I had an early Epson personal Laser printer that I bought new in 1993.

I was still using it (and the original toner cartridge) 10 years later. I finally abandoned it (with a 1/4 full cartridge) in 2003 as I couldn't get a memory upgrade for it any longer - and 512KB just wasn't able to cope.

SD

[frostbite]

A lot depends on how the stuff has been stored.

The Use By date is usually conservative, and if they have been stored in a cool dry place then there should be some considerable leeway.