MICR Toner and Check Printing
New HP Printers P1102W and P1606dn – MICR in R&D
HP LaserJet P1102W
HP just released two new printers. Both printers are in the low end of the market with the 18ppm P1102W with a street price of $150 and the 26ppm P1606dn coming in at $230 or so. The printers are in my book throwaways but for the price they are offering some options that used to be pricey. The W in P1102W is for wireless. And the DN in P1606DN is for Duplexing and Network. for so much documentation that is printed, duplexing is a great way to save paper. Also HP has departed from the vanilla printer to a new sleeker looking black printer.
The P1606dn uses a HP CE278A toner cartridge, rated for 2,100 pages. the HP P1102W uses a CE285A rated for 1,600 pages. While upfront cost is low, the cost per page on these models is relatively high. These are designed for home or small business use. These make great little check printers if your volume is low, as they’re inexpensive and take up little space.
Both printers are now in R&D for MICR toner applications, and we hope to have both the P1102W / CE285A MICR toner cartridge and the P1606DN / CE278A MICR toner cartridge available sometime in May.
New Product: HP LaserJet P2055d MICR Laser Printer for check printing
HP P2055d MICR Laser Printer
Hot off the press, we’re now shipping the HP P2055d MICR laser printers. This is a great little printer, prints 35ppm with stunning quality. The “D” means it duplexes as well. Not that you would duplex checks, still the duplexer comes in handy and is a great way to save paper. This is a real laser printer with it’s own processor and memory, not like it’s little brother the LaserJet P2035 which is host based. The host based machines are not necessarily bad, but they rely on the processor in your computer to handle the graphics work. Also this printer has PCL5e and PCL6 so it can take jobs from non-Windows machines and older DOS programs with no problems. The P2055d comes with a real CE255A, not a starter cartridge. We’ve replaced the toner with MICR toner. You still get the same NEW cartridge that came with the printer, but with MICR Toner.
New Product P3015 MICR Toner CE255A CE255X
MICR Toner Cartridges for the HP LaserJet P3015, P3015d, P3015dn laser printers are here! We released the CE255A MICR and CE255X MICR toner cartridges on 9/1/09. So far we haven’t seen much action on this product as the supply of the P3015 is low. We were lucky to get an early release direct from HP. Once the supply opens up, we expect this to be a popular cartridge.
We also plan to sell a HP P3015 MICR Laser Printer once we can get our hands on a steady supply. This year, HP seems to have mis-timed the release of their new printers, as supply of the P4014n, P3005 were already exhausted before any replacement laser printers were available. We’ve been forced to find new suppliers to fulfill our orders for HP MICR Laser Printers.
We’re planning on releasing the Lexmark T650, T652, T654 MICR toner cartridge hopefully by October 1st.
New HP Printer – HP P3015 MICR Toner?
HP has a new printer, the HP LaserJet P3015. It uses a hp CE255A and CE255X toner cartridge. We are already working on CE255A MICR and CE255X MICR toner cartridges for check printing. We don’t have a release date on the printer. At first glance, the printer looks like a juiced up P2015. They’ve increased the speed from 27ppm to 40ppm. They’ve increased the paper tray from 250 sheets to 500 and they’ve increased the recommended monthly page volume from 3,000 to 5,000. Still from the looks of it there doesn’t appear to be anything drastically different from the P2015. The printer does support PCL 5e and PCL 6, so it’s not another mindless host based laser printer.
- Speed: 40ppm
- Recommended Monthly Volume: 1,500 – 5,000
- Monthly Duty Cycle: 100,000
- CE255A – 6,000 Pages
- CE255X – 12,500 Pages
Density Settings and MICR Fonts for the HP P1005, P1006, P1505
If you have one of the newer HP LaserJet printers, one thing you’ll notice is the TrueType MICR fonts can appear faint or have a thinner stroke than they should. This is not a toner problem, as as the image quality and density is fine, but rather a result in the way the newer printers render the font itself. If the MICR font doesn’t have the proper stroke width the signal strength of the characters will decrease. Low signal strength may cause your bank’s check scanners to reject them. This will result in your bank in having to manually encode each check. If this happens your bank will likely contact you about the problem. But you’ll need to get the problem fixed or the bank may assess an additional processing charge.
P2035 New MICR Toner Cartridge Release
HP released a high yield toner cartridge, the CE505X, but the high yield only fits the P2055 series and will not fit in the P2035. Based on this we decided to initially release only the standard yield toner cartridge. We still have plans to release the high yield MICR toner cartridge once the market shows some demand.Weak dollar and high oil prices driving HP prices up
HP announced the price increase effective September 1st, but our suppliers have told us they will not actually increase the price until October 1st. So be warned, new pricing will be here by October 1. If you are a big HP toner user, I’d go ahead and make an extra big order before October comes around.
Why don’t you make a MICR toner cartridge for my machine?
This is one of the most common questions we are asked. Many times it is asked in frustration and many times our answers leave people feeling empty inside. Ok, maybe not empty inside but companies who want to print checks also want to use the printer they already have.
If you aren’t using a Hewlett Packard or Lexmark monochrome printer, chances are there isn’t a MICR toner available for your machine. Supply and demand dictates where production dollars will be allocated for both the toner cartridge and consumable (cartridge, parts and loose toner) manufacturers. Since HP and Lexmark have a stranglehold on the laser printer industry, companies such as ours will spend money to produce a MICR toner cartridge for those very machines that saturate the market. This trickles down to the loose toner vendors, they too will not create a MICR toner powder for machines that don’t saturate the market.
All you need to do is dump some MICR toner into a cartridge!
I have been quietly to very loudly told this by many customers who think they understand the toner manufacturing industry. We wish it were that simple because it would have saved us a lot of time and money. It is far more sophisticated of a process to make a MICR toner cartridge because not every cartridge takes the same MICR toner. The component parts of a HP 4200 toner cartridge will not work with the MICR toner used in a HP 1100 cartridge and vice-versa. The component parts may also need to be manufactured specifically for MICR printing. There are even more variables that need to be considered, but it would be silly and equally boring to list them all.
So what do you do if you can’t find a MICR toner for your laser printer?
1. Research what MICR toners are available and then buy that machine
2. Buy pre-printed checks
3. Find a company that claims they can produce it.
Buyer Beware- if a company claims to produce a MICR toner for machines other than HP and Lexmark, research that company’s return policy and make sure they have a money back guarantee. We carry some MICR toners for laser printers outside of HP and Lexmark lines however they either have the same engine as a HP/ Lexmark machine or the demand at one point substantiated producing it.
Good luck and Happy Check Printing!
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