The Difference between a Drum Unit and a Laser Toner Cartridge

When replacing the consumables of your Brother laser printers particularly the cartridge and drum, it’s sometimes confusing on part of the user to distinguish which is the toner and which is the drum. This is mostly encountered by new users who just acquired a laser printer that uses separate drum units and cartridges. If we also refer from the history, laser type printers before were typically using a consumable that serves as the toner and drum in one.

What makes the cartridge and drum unit different?

First thing you should know is that a laser toner cartridge is the one that holds the toners. It is like a tank of micro-sized black or colored pigments, typically called particles which are used to create images on a printed material.

While drum units or also referred to as imaging drums are like the carbon papers that transfer the toners to the paper sheet. Each drum corresponds to a certain toner color, thus if you’re using a color laser printer then you have 8 consumables to replace. Over a monochrome printer that only needs one each of toner and drum unit.

Which can last longer: Toner or Drum?

Basically, you can’t compare chicken from pork, same goes with print toners and drums. We can just let you know about their capacities, thus giving you an idea which can last longer. This is only to clarify that replacing toner cartridges doesn’t mean you also have to replace the drum units.

Let’s use the Brother HL-3040CN as our example, it is a color digital printer, hence it requires four each of toner cartridge and Brother DR-210CLdrum unit. Its black cartridge has an approximate page-yield of 2200 pages, the three other colors such as cyan, magenta and yellow can yield 1400 pages, while the drum units can deliver 15,000 pages. With these figures, you can now determine which among these two consumables can certainly last longer.

Deteriorate and Running-Low

The term deteriorate is associated with the drum unit, while running-low is for the cartridges. These two terms are typically involved when either of the consumables are about to be replaced. Once the drum’s quality is noticeably deteriorating, printouts will be greatly affected. The same with the cartridges, if it’s running-low in toner, it leads to less vibrant results.

You’ll know which one to replace via the system prompt or the error message that pops from the machine’s control panel display. If it says there that one of the installed cartridges is running-low on supply, then it’s pretty obvious what to do. On the other hand, if the error that flashes on the screen is something like “Replace Drum Unit”, you know what to replace then.

There are instances that the user doesn’t want to remove it and re-install a new one, just because they thought it could still last for more prints. You should know that the quality of drums may deteriorate faster in the long run, especially if you don’t replace it as often as necessary. Cartridges are to be replaced as soon as they run empty, you have no choice anyway.

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