Thread: Question on Toner

Was wondering if it is possible to use mica powder as toner???

Thanks,

saint.

I have never heard of anyone successfully manufacturing their own toner. The charging properties, flow, and melting/adhesion would all be critical. I'm not a chemist though. The toner refill companies reverse-engineer OEM toners, but they only do so for the most common printers and usually don't offer new options (e.g. different gloss levels, etc.) but rather stick as close to OEM properties as possible, suggesting to me that it's quite a difficult process to come up with something new that will work in an existing machine. I would love to be proven wrong though. It would open up a world of possibilities to have many different qualities of toner available for existing machines. E.g. in a color laser I'd like to be able to come up with something that looked metallic but didn't ruin the charging of the toner. I'd love to have quadratone b/w toners (black, charcoal, gray, light gray) to produce really rich black and white prints. Or different warm/cool blacks. I'd love to have really bright toners to do fluorescent prints. Opalescent. The list could be almost infinite, especially for smaller/modular printers where you could load specialty toners cartridges/drums per job. I've not seen any of this though.

I'd even like opaque white toner for laser printing reverse text on dark colored or black stocks. Xeikon has such a solution for their web lasers
http://www.xeikon.com/web/page.asp?c...2ID=33&TID=176

Originally Posted by xeikon

White toner

When printing on transparent substrates, white toner is applied as reflecting layer under the coloured toner layers for optimal image quality. Containing an optical brightener that illuminates when exposed to UV light, this toner can also be used to create special effects.


Clear toner

The clear toner is a transparent toner, which is applied under the CMYK colors. The result is a subtle silk gloss effect when applied under low density screened images or the clear toner can be used to create transparent glossy effects on paper. The addition of UV lighting components makes this toner suitable for certain “security” applications such as entrance cards for parties and exhibitions. The local gloss effect can not be picked up by a scanner, introducing an additional security feature into the printed matter.

But I haven't seen something similar for a canon/xerox/ricoh/xante/etc. desktop/sheet fed smaller laser printer.

Close: White Sublimation Laser Toner: http://www.atttransfer.com/whitetoner.html

The white toner is designed to work with the ATI sublimation toner for color applications on dark substrates. The ATI white toner will not work with a laser OEM toner.

The white and the sublimation toner are currently designed for the Oki 3200 and the 5200 models. We have clean drums and new printers for these models. The white and sublimation toner will run in the Oki model 7350 but we don’t have clean drums for them as yet.

The sublimation toner cost $675.00 per set of 4 cartridges. You will yield approximately 1300 letter size transfers from a set.

The white toner cost $960.00 per set of 4 cartridges. We don’t have a yield count but there is 1/3 more toner in each cartridge then the sublimation cartridges have.

You need CLEAN drums for the 5200 Oki and the white toner. Those drums are $400.00 for a set of 4.

The cost for a new Oki 3200 with sublimation toner is $975.00.

The cost for a new Oki 3200 with white toner and clean drums is $1660.00.

For those customers who currently own a model 5200 Oki you only need the clean drums and white toner. If you don’t have the ATI sublimation toner you need the new Oki and a set of sublimation toner. If you have the ATI sublimation toner you only require the 3200 printer.

The good news is it only cost you as a start up for 2 NEW 3200 printers with sublimation toner and white toner $2235.00 to do almost anything imaginable as described above.

We look forward to assisting you further and you may contact us on our toll free # @ 1-866-900-2830
Regards
AL La Costa/CEO, Pres.

Can the white toner be adapted for a non sublimation use through different fusing temperature? I don't know.

Why not use Laser Toners from Island Ink-Jet and Laser Toners instead?

May be what your looking for.

The Island Ink-Jet and Laser Toners pricing seems pretty high.

Considering mica has crystal properties it would most likely not bond with the waxing agent in toner.

Second, you'd have to create specific developer to "carry" the mica toner to the drum. You probably wouldn't get the charge to work properly to put the toner on the drum.

It would probably be better to develop a synthetic material with a mica-like appearance. It would be cool though and should be tried.

~Patrick