We all knew inkjet printer cartridges were an outright scam, but sadly it seems that the makers of laser toner cartridges have some explaining to do as well. Lumafield scanned a new one and an "empty" one with an industrial CT machine and reports that the new one was sold 20% full and the "empty" one still had 15% in the tank.
What we found shocked us: not only was the empty one not really empty, but the full cartridge was far from full!
With the help of the automated measurements tool in Voyager—our browser-based industrial CT analysis software—we found that right out of the box, only about 20% of the space inside the cartridge reservoir is occupied by toner. A cartridge deemed "empty" by the printer has only slightly less toner, about 15%. That 5% range seems to represent the entire capacity of the cartridge. But what exactly is inside?
Scanning deadstock from the 1980s/1990s as a control, perhaps, might be in order.
