Consumable Yields: Choosing the Best Printer or Multi-function Device for Your Budget
What are Consumable Yields?
In June of 2004, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) announced yield testing and reporting standards for Monochrome Xerographic Engines under ISO/IEC 19752. In December of 2006, they also announced standards for Color Xerographic Engines under the ISO/IEC 19798 and ISO/IEC 24711. These standards are important as they help make sure that toner or ink yield reporting by various manufacturers are held to the same testing standards. This made yields comparable throughout different products and manufacturers to help make evaluating costs and between manufacturers easier for consumers.
How Yields are Calculated
During a testing, testers use a minimum of three printers and three toner cartridges per device. They also purchase toner cartridges from multiple sources in the open market. Newly developed printers or multi-function devices are tested from different production lots. Using nine samples of each toner cartridge produces the lowest predicted yield estimates with 90% statistical significance.
In order to comply with the guidelines from printer manufacturers, testing must be done in areas where the temperatures are in compliance with the recommended temperature range. Most printers require a range of between 23 degrees to 2 degrees Celsius (73 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit) with a humidity range of 50%-10% RH.
During testing, only a single page is used and area coverage of the page is about 5%. The pages are printed on a semi-continuous cycle and stopped only to reload paper. Printers and Multi-function devices are set up according to the directions provided by the manufacturer and testers use only default settings and drivers.
For new devices, printers must first run through one complete toner cartridge before starting the test.
Keep in mind that the ISO/IEC yield is not a predictable statistic and used for comparing devices. Therefore, the number of pages that will be produced will depend on a variety of factors. Page coverage has the highest impact on the yield.
The industry average for black and white coverage is between 4%-5%. Research has found a relationship between page coverage and toner yield as the lower the page coverage, the more pages the toner will yield and higher page covers results in lower toner yields.
Need More Information?
Testing data and results can be found on the ISO Testing reports page and information about the process of yield testing can be found on the Printer and Multi-function Consumable Yields document.
If you need more information on finding the right device for your business, call us today at 702-920-0910!
