Xerox Cartridges

How to use a Lexmark 12A1970 cartridge on a Xerox Workcentre XK40c

The Facts

Sometime ago my wife and I decided to purchase a multifunction printer. After seeing many choices we finally make up our minds and decided to buy a Xerox Workcentre XK40c. It’s really nice hardware, it’s a printer, scanner and copy machine, with both parallel and usb ports.

When we finally need to buy a new ink cartridge, we discover thay they cost too much money and they are not easy to get here in Rosario, Argentina so we decided to recycle the original cartridges. We do that and it worked quite well for some time.

When the original cartridge was just too bad to recycle it it was time to finally buy a new one, but we were unable to find it in Rosario nor in Buenos Aires. So for sometime we end up using our old HP printer and use the Xerox only as a scanner.

But one day I entered a local computer store and I saw this very same printer being used by the people of the store. So I asked about the ink cartridges and they said they do not have the original Xerox ones, but they used the Lexmark ones.

What?!?!?, I thought, that means I was able to use the more cheaper lexmark cartridges with my Xerox???. YES!!!!

So I bought the lexmark ink cartridge (12A1970) for about 30 us dollars (the xerox ones were priced around 50 or 60 us dollars!!!)

Later at home, when I tried to install the lexmark cartridge on the xerox printer, there seems to be a problem and the cartridge did not fit securely on the cartridge tray. Well, the girl at the store told me they were using them, they must fit!!!.
I dont’t want to amuse you, so I will go straight to the point.

There is a way!!!!

The problem is that the cartridges have a top plastic head that must fit securely in the cartridge tray, it has a couple of edges that must align to the ones on the cartridge tray. But my lexmark cartridge did not align with them!!!.
So after looking carefully, I discovered that the cartridge tray have two little plastic tags on it that can be removed and voila!!, the cartridge magically fits and you have saved your hard earned money!!! have a look at the photographs an see for yourself. (Sorry for the quality of the photographs, they were taken with a webcam.)

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This is the original black ink cartridge bundled with the printer.

This is the box of the new black ink cartridge we’re going to use.

This is the new black ink cartridge we’re going to use.

Here are both of them side to side, see they are almost the same except for the label.

Here is another shot of them. Pretty similar eh?

Here is another one from the back. Did I mention they’re the same??. Well. almost, look at the top of them.

This is the top of the Xerox cartridge.

This is the top of the Lexmark cartridge. See the difference?

This is the cartridge tray. See that pink plastic tab??. There was a black one on the other bay!!!

See how they fit together.

This is the offendig tab from the black cartridge. (The photos from the pink one are from the color cartridge)

One more shot of the plastic tab that I removed from the cartridge tray.

And another one.

See how it fits on the Xerox cartridge?

See how it blocks the insertion of the lexmark cartridge.

Finally both cartridges in place!!.

Conclusion

So this, obiously means that both Xerox and Lexmark cartridges are made by the same people, not Xerox nor Lexmark??? so why do Xerox cartridges costs more than Lexmark ones??? I leave that for your imagination, but don’t waste your money, buy the lexmark cartridges (by the way, they are cheaper, but not really cheap!!) and use them freely on your Xerox printer.

The black cartridge is the 12A1970 and the color one is the 1980 model. Happy printing!!!!

UPDATE:

Suddenly the cartridge stopped working and it has ink left on it. Perhaps a «date protection» like in the HP cartridges?

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Last updated February 23nd, 2005All trademarks are property of their respective owners.