Frequently Asked Questions

OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. The OEM of your printer could be ex: - Hp, Brother, Canon, Epson etc.

Professionally remanufactured cartridges have been recycled to meet or exceed original equipment manufacturer specifications. The remanufacturing process involves inspecting, disassembling, cleaning, replacing worn parts, filling the cartridge and then tested.

In remanufactured toner cartridge you won’t notice any difference in print quality compared to the output of OEM cartridges. When we remanufacture cartridges, we replace their internal parts with new parts.
What you will notice is a difference in price: Our remanufactured toner cartridges cost up to 40% lesser than OEM Cartridges. Concurrently, you will achieve substantial savings with remanufactured cartridges while maintaining high quality print out.

Remember, reuse is the highest form of recycling, so whether you are having your cartridges refilled and keeping them for yourself or are giving them away to be recycled, there are a few things you can do to help the success rate.
Never print until ALL the ink is gone. You should watch your printouts and when your print quality becomes noticeably poor, STOP printing and replace your cartridge. If you print until your cartridge is completely out of ink you run the risk of burning out the print heads on the cartridge, thereby rendering the cartridge completely unusable.
Always store your ink cartridges (whether full or empty) with the print heads facing down. This allows them to stay moist and prevent dried ink from clogging the print heads.
If your ink cartridge came with a clip, placing the cartridge back into the clip also helps prevent the print heads from drying out. If you do not have a clip place your cartridge in a sealed plastic bag.
Protect the copper electronics area of your cartridge. If this area becomes scratched, dented, etc. your cartridge may become unusable. The same clips that prevent the print heads from drying out are also used to protect the copper electronics also.

At AST we remanufacture all our cartridges. Our certified technicians disassemble the cartridge, examine all parts, replace worn parts, add graphic-arts quality toner, and reassemble the cartridge.
That’s why we say we do not just recycle, we remanufacture. Some companies may simply recycle by refilling with toner and re-using components too. This inferior process causes quality problems.
AST cartridges are guaranteed to perform 100% as brand new cartridges.

Each year over 375 million empty ink and toner cartridges are thrown away with most ending up in landfills or in incinerators. The mountain of waste can be reduced through reuse and recycling. Yet approximately 70 % of ink cartridges and 50% of all toner cartridges are still not recycled.
The plastic used in printer cartridges are made of an engineering grade polymer that have a very slow decomposing rate ranging between 450 to 1000 years depending on the cartridge type.
Start using recycled toner cartridges for a better environment.

Page yield is dependent on what you are printing. You will obviously be able to print more pages with simple text and less with graphics/picture filled pages. The answer to the question is that the same amount of high quality ink (and in some cases more) is used at AST as with the OEMs. Buy AST toner cartridge for a substantial cost savings and the equivalent amount of pages as with the expensive OEM cartridge.

FAQ