Something your mother didn’t tell you about the HP1200 cartridge. This is a critical issue even if you hand deliver this cartridge.

Many of us with smaller remanufacturing shops don’t use OEM style seals for the simple reason that we hand deliver daily to many of our customers. Unfortunately the HP1200 cartridge has an Achilles heel in this area. This one concerns the mag roller retaining blade and a simple bump or drop. Now, you and I know that a customer will never tell you ‘I dropped it!’ and sometimes even your staff don’t mention a small drop, but that’s all it takes to cause a problem.

The gap between the mag roller and the retaining blade is larger than on most cartridges. Therefore, the mag roller retaining blade in the HP1200 is a wider blade, compared to earlier generations, to compensate for the wider gap. If the cartridge doesn’t have an OEM style seal, when dropped from even a moderate height, the weight of the toner in the hopper can cause the retaining blade to flip out of position and toner will spill out (see photo 1 & 2).

Another contributing factor is that the OEM retaining blade is the usual type of very thin Mylar and therefore it can be easily distorted. Once this has happened then it becomes a bit of a lottery with this blade. You can replace the HP1200 retaining blade with an EP/PC25 or IBM 4019 Mylar recovery blade, which are wider than most others. These blades are usually thicker than the Mylar used in the OEM retaining blade and are usually harder to displace.

The positioning of the new replacement blade is important and is different to the position of the OEM retaining blade. The original OEM blade is 15mm wide, the IBM 4019 is 13mm wide and so needs to be placed in a lower position than the OEM (see photo 5).

It is important to position the adhesive so that it seals off the 2 rectangular holes on the back edge of the cartridge (see photo 3). If the adhesive does not adhere to the area below the bottom of the rectangular openings toner will find its way out of the hopper. Our rule of thumb is to place the bottom edge of the adhesive along the ridge just below the holes and use the ridge line as a guide (see photo 4).

A closer look at the HP1200 shows that the distance from toner delivery (mag roller) to paper delivery (transfer roller) has been increased, possibly because of the higher page per minute of this printer. It may also help explain the reason for this part of the cartridge combing protruding more than in previous generations. The paper path in this printer emulates something more likely to be seen in, say, an Epson 5500, where the paper comes into the printer and then starts to climb the back wall before the image is transferred. The advantage to recyclers is that this cartridge will have a lower component wear factor. Many of the parts will last longer when you compare them to say 5L, 6L & 1100’s, and this means less new parts for more cycles.