Saving money on toners

[barber782]

Hi everyone,

i’m looking for a way to reduce cost of sending out toners to customers. Apart from using compatible toners.

cheers

[slimslob]

Keep your customer's equipment properly maintained so that the equipment does not waste toner.

[Blizzoo]

If your machines are capable to be setup in a way to decrease the toner print density on all colors in Service Mode this can be an option for those customers who doesn't moan about the quality too much.

[BillyCarpenter]

Default the printer to print black. If the customer wants to print in color they will have to select color.

[tsbservice]

I think OP asked how to reduce toner consumption on CPC machines. This is very tricky without compromising quality, ie if using toner save function in print drivers print quality will reduce drastically.
Maybe lower TCR values in service mode a bit or two?

[BillyCarpenter]

I think OP asked how to reduce toner consumption on CPC machines. This is very tricky without compromising quality, ie if using toner save function in print drivers print quality will reduce drastically.
Maybe lower TCR values in service mode a bit or two?

Agreed. It gets even more tricky when you factor in page coverage...which is out of our control.

[tsbservice]

Agreed. It gets even more tricky when you factor in page coverage...which is out of our control.

You know for sure that talented dealer feels with his/her guts how to avoid such contracts on toner hog clients.
As engineer it challenges me a lot to find those golden settings when customers and we are equally satisfied.

[KenB]

It may sound silly, but make sure they’re not doing stupid things like making copies with the doc cover open.

You may have to hang out one day and just observe what the users are doing...it can be an eye opener.

Years ago, I had a customer bitterly complain about (b&w) toner usage, where toner was not included in their contract.

Sure enough, they were frequently copying one or two checks at a time...with the cover open.

[Vincent128]

One thing that has been a problem in the past for us is toner hoarding or ordering all the colors when only needing one color.

With the Toshibas we have a cloud policy that alerts us to low toner and can send our toner that way.

I also have a policy that sets the low toner alert at 3% remaining rather than the default % remains which was way to high by default.
The exception being actual high coverage customers who's contracts pricing already reflects their over average toner usage.

This puts a stop to toner hoarding.

Also exporting the cloud numbers and poking them into Toshiba's MFP MDT program, we can seek out high toner pixel count machines and do some onsite review as to why or by using the the cloud numbers for say the density sensor feedback voltage in addition to the consumable counts to find machines that need attention.

Obviously good experienced technicians and proper machine maintenance is key as well...and one the the hardest things to find...

You got to know when/where/why/what numbers etc that developer and drums can go to before the machine starts replacing lost/worn developer with toner.

Unhealthy machines now-a-days will still pump out great copy quality with worn out components at the cost of eating toner and/or dusting excess toner everywhere inside the machine which will lower the life of all the moving parts the toner soils.

I will never work anywhere that uses non-oem toner or Imaging supplies again - Over and over I have seen aftermarket toner, developer or drums just make a mess of things. "hey these drums cost 1/2 the price...um..but we are onsite 4 times as much and now developer will only go 1/2 it's yield...yeah but look at all the $ we saved on the drums!"

[BillyCarpenter]

In today's competitive market, it's imperative that dealers do their homework before taking on a new client. Sometimes its better to walk away from a deal rather than losing money on the service contract. I've seen the competition charge as little as 3-cents per click for a color copy. Do I want to match that? The answer is: It depends. Are they printing full coverage pages or mainly spot color? Knowing the answer to that question could be the difference between making money or losing your shirt.

Fortunately for me Kyocera has tiered billing capability. The machine knows how much coverage is on each page and we bill accordingly. It's hard for other manufacturers to compete with that because their machines don't have that capability. I think Xerox is the only other brand that has this?