What is a Laser Toner Chip? and how to reset Toner Chip?

What is a Laser Toner Chip?

Toner chip, also called printer or toner smart chips, are used by printers to monitor the reserves and levels of your current toner cartridge. They communicate with your PC to provide warnings when certain levels are reached or if any other issue arises.

Toner chips read levels by monitoring your cartridge’s droplet count, or the number or toner droplets that have been used so far when printing. Chips are programmed for specific toner designs and will provide warnings and stop printing once a certain number of droplets have been used. Unfortunately, this means that cartridges you refill may still have toner in them if the chip isn’t reset and told that a cartridge was refilled.

Toner chips have caused some controversy because they make it difficult to refill a printer cartridge. After you refill a cartridge, you have to reset or replace the chip in order for your printer to allow you to print. When replacing a spent cartridge with one from a third party, some smart chips will send users warnings that these cartridges will damage your printer, there is little research evidence of damage.

Many customers report issues with toner cartridges not being recognized by smart chips or with chips saying that their toner is empty when the cartridge still has droplets available. To avoid these problems, you should always power down your printer when doing any maintenance or replacing cartridges. Bad connections or improper installations of new cartridges can also cause many of these errors. Reinstalling the cartridge and following your manufacturer’s instructions with the power off can resolve some issues.

How To Reset or Replace a Chip?

Depending on your printer model, smart chips in your toner cartridge may or may not be able to be reset. Some chips store toner levels permanently in memory and don’t allow this memory to be accessed. If this type of chip is in your toner, you will need to replace the chip when refilling your cartridge. Other chips can be reset with a “resetter,” a small plastic tool that physically connects with the cartridge chip and tells the chip to return its count of spent droplets to zero.