A cheap replacement for Dongle Gear (patent protection for laser cartridges for HP and Canon)
Due to the high speed, reliability and low cost of printing, laser printers are in greatest demand around the world. This superiority is especially noticeable in the extremely profitable corporate segment, which is also sought after by the companies of the secondary printing market: manufacturers of alternative consumables (cartridges, toner, paper) and smaller ones that are tied to the after-sales service, primarily refuellers of original and compatible cartridges. Large vendors, predictably, do not want to share profits, so technological and legal warfare has been waged with third-party offices wishing to pluck a piece of the pie.
On the technical side, the most popular means of protecting original laser cartridges are chips with a digital toner counter (the situation is the same with inkjet cartridges). After the cartridge fulfills its strictly specified quantity, the printer can block printing, even if the powder still remains. However, such severe restrictions do not always apply and often the user simply receives a warning about the end of the toner without stopping work.
From the legal point of view, everything is more complicated - cartridge designs and the chemical composition of toner are often protected by patents, so copying them “on the forehead” is most often impossible (more precisely, of course, key markets will be closed for them), which is why manufacturers of alternative consumables you have to go to various tricks in order to maintain compatibility with the device and at the same time not get a lawsuit for pirated copying of patented technology.
However, the above protective measures did not prevent third-party manufacturers from doing their job, which was followed by even more sophisticated retaliatory measures: in 2008, Canon released the first laser cartridges with special mechanics, called the Dongle Gear, which seriously complicated the life of the “pirates”. By the way, it is worth noting that historically in the field of laser printers, Canon has partnered with Hewlett-Packard, so the changes affected the design of the cartridges of both companies.
To explain the essence of the innovation, we briefly clarify the principle of laser printing. In the printer itself, only the mechanics and the laser are located, and the main printing filling is on the cartridge. Inside, there is a PCR roller, which transfers the charge to the drum unit in an even layer. With a narrow laser beam, the printer “illuminates” the charge from the drum, forming an electrostatic picture, to which negatively charged toner particles adhere. In this form, the adhered toner reaches the paper onto which it is transferred under the action of an additional transfer roller. Well, a little later, the paper is bonded to the toner under the influence of high temperature in the so-called “stove” (two more rollers). In older printers, charged korotn threads were used instead of rollers, but the principle of operation was identical.
Simply put, the operation of a laser cartridge is to constantly rotate multiple rollers. In the most common case, the printer rotates the rod axis of the drum, and the rotation of the remaining elements is transmitted through the gears. But in Dongle Gear cartridges, instead of a solid axis, something like a circular hinge with a snap mechanism is used. That is, while the cartridge is not in the printer, the transmission freely dangles in all directions and firmly fits in the groove only inside the device.
A simple and elegant solution seriously hit third-party manufacturers. The trick is that they faced a choice: to make cartridges with a similar circular gear, or to come up with an alternative with a standard axis. Those who took the first path eventually became a victim of a flurry of lawsuits against them (in May 16, Canon sued 33 companies at once and got the American ITC to ban the import of products violating their exclusive rights to the USA), well, the rest were forced to produce cartridges with simplified axial mechanics, much less convenient to use on hinge printers (the cartridge was inserted, but then it was extremely difficult to remove).
As always, ordinary buyers had to pay for the fight against piracy - the cost of cartridges with complicated mechanics was higher than that of ordinary ones. What affected the price of both the originals themselves and their “restored” (refilled) versions.
It's about time the prince appears in history in shining armor. Since the advent of the new mechanism, G&G, a subsidiary of Ninestar, has begun developing an adequate alternative. And in 2014, the first prototype of the BlueDrive mechanism appeared, which serves as a full replacement for the original Dongle Gear. The litigation with the American Commission on International Trade took another two years, but in the summer of 2016, the companies were given the green light (an official document confirming the uniqueness of the device ). BlueDrive technology has been recognized as an original patent-free development by Canon.
From that moment on, Ninestar had the opportunity to create affordable and user-friendly alternative cartridges compatible with Dongle Gear for Canon and HP printers, which they proudly share with their customers in a recent brochure .