Brother DR350 Drum Unit - Retail Packaging

 (55 customer reviews)

The cartridge that this drum holds will refuse to let you print after a certain time, alleging that the toner life is ended.

This will fly in the face of the evidence of crisp pages, with evidently a decent amount of toner left. This is not like the old days, where the pages continue to print, and the print quality degrades as toner dissipates. Nope, this is a "We'll decide for you when you go get another cartridge" move by the manufacturer.

Countermeasures against this ploy:

1. Shake cartridge, replace
2. After a while, #1 won't work. Then, open cover, Options, *00, close cover
2. After a while, #2 won't work. Then, get a black Sharpie and cover the laser window on the non-gear side of the cartridge.

Should get you closer to getting your money's worth.

I had a "Change Drum Soon" message for over a year, and the original drum kept working fine. I finally had to replace the drum at 16,080 copies because of some smearing/double imaging.

This trick, plus the tape-over-hole trick for extending toner cartridge life, reduces your consumables cost by 40%. Well under 2 cents per page...better than any other laser printer I know of.

**12-30-09: The following trick is obsolete. HL-2040 is no longer sold** -->> The brother HL-2040 printer often goes on sale for 65 to 70 bucks. Just throw away the printer but use the DR-350 drum and the starter toner cartridge ($25 worth of toner).

I changed the drum but the printer still asks me to change the drum. It was a very expensive piece and it is very frustrating to still see this error message...