Brother MFC-9420CN and Black cartridge issue

[James1982]

I have a Brother MFC-9420CN and a black toner cartridge (TN-04BK). It emptied and one of the staffers purchased a toner refill kit. I've done several inkjet refills, but never a laser refill. I followed the directions closely, dumped any old excess toner, and filled with the new toner. Put it in the machine and ran off a few test pages. No black print was coming out. The three other colors were coming out flawlessly, but the black was doing nothing.

I noticed that the other color cartridges had the color spread evenly on the silver-ish bar in the cartridge, except the black one. I would assume this is some kind of transfer roller??? I don't know. I'm getting furious with Brother, they won't offer ANY kind of support, advice, or referrals. Did I miss something???

[cs_steve]

The silverish bar you see is called the imaging drum ... this drum gets magnetically charged in such a way that it draws toner onto it in the pattern of the laser image ... then, as the paper passes by each toner cartridge, the paper gets magnetically charged so that the specks of toner leave the drum and transfer over onto the paper ...

Basically, my advice would be to get a fresh toner cartridge ... unfortunately, it sounds like refilling the toner in this case did not work. I don't mean that you necessarily did anything wrong while refilling it, it's just that "refilling" laser cartridges doesn't always work. There are different qualities of refill kits out there, and also there are plenty of circumstances where "refilling" won't fix the problem, such as cases where other components in the cartridge need to be replaced (wiper blades, drum, etc).

If buying another cartridge directly from Brother is too expensive and "drilling and filling" isn't working out, you should purchase a professionally-remanufactured toner ... here again, there are different qualities of remanufacturers ... the best remanufacturers do more than just drilling a hole and adding more toner, they actually replace moving components in the cartridge that tend to wear out, like the drum and the wiper blades ... also, they should test the cartridge before shipping, and give you a guarantee & warranty...