ProMark: why the base material matters
Polystyrene base
What most MICR toner uses
- Weaker cohesion
Polyester base
ProMark
- Stronger cohesion
- Higher heat tolerance
Five criteria evaluated on every formulation. Signal strength, adhesion, cohesion, durability, and toner life.
A universal MICR toner is a compromise made once at the factory and paid for in every engine it lands in.
The appeal of one toner for every printer is obvious. One part number, one price, one thing to stock. Purchasing departments like it and so do distributors. We do not make one, and the reason is not marketing. It is that the thing being sold is not really the toner.
What a check printing operation is buying is signal strength at a read head. Signal strength is a property of the assembled machine, not of the toner alone. The engine, the fuser temperature, the transfer roller, and the toner all contribute. Change any one of them and the number at the read head changes.
What the read head is measuring
Start with what has to happen. A reader/sorter magnetizes the ink on the MICR line, passes it under a read head, and compares the resulting waveform against the standard. E-13B characters carry deliberately uneven ink mass distribution, which is what gives each character a distinct waveform.
The signal comes from iron oxide in the toner. That is what makes magnetic toner magnetic, and it is also why magnetic toner is black. But the amount of iron oxide in the cartridge is not the amount that ends up bonded to the paper in the shape of a character. Between the cartridge and the finished item sits an entire print engine.
What differs between engines
Print engines are not interchangeable boxes with different speed ratings. They differ in ways that land directly on the quantity the read head measures.
| Variable | What it changes | Effect on the MICR line |
|---|---|---|
| Fuser temperature | How completely toner bonds to the paper | Adhesion affects signal strength, so under-bonded toner reads weak |
| Transfer roller behavior | How much toner moves from drum to page | Determines the ink mass actually present in the character |
| Engine design overall | The combined path from image to bonded toner | Sets where a given formulation lands within the acceptable range |
| Toner formulation | The magnetic material available to begin with | The one variable a supplier can tune to match the other three |
Only the last row is under the toner formulator's control. The first three are properties of the machine the customer already owns. A toner designed without reference to them is a toner designed against an average printer, and nobody owns an average printer.
What a compromise formulation actually costs
A universal toner does not usually produce a dramatic failure. If it did, it would not sell. What it produces is a loss of margin.
Picture the acceptable range at the read head as a band. A toner tuned to a specific engine aims for the middle of that band. A universal toner, tuned to satisfy many engines, lands somewhere within the band on each of them, sometimes near an edge. On the day it is installed in a machine in good condition, both pass.
Then time passes. The fuser ages, and fuser condition affects toner adhesion. The transfer roller wears. Stock arrives from a new lot. Each of those nudges the signal, and the operation that started near the middle of the band absorbs the nudges. The operation that started near an edge starts producing rejects.
That is what makes this hard to see from the outside. The toner that caused the problem worked fine for months. The thing that changed was something else, and the toner simply had no room left.
Margin is the right word for it, and it is not a quality that appears on a specification sheet. Two cartridges can both be described accurately as MICR toner, both pass on the day they are installed, and differ entirely in how much of the acceptable range they leave in reserve for everything else that will drift over the next year.
Why we accept the extra work
Formulating per engine means more products to develop, more to test, and more to keep in stock. It is a worse business in every respect except the one that matters, which is what comes out of the machine the customer actually owns.
The alternative is to design a toner against a hypothetical average engine and let each customer absorb the difference between that average and their own machine. Some of them would absorb it easily. Some of them would absorb it as bank fees, without ever being told that was the tradeoff being made on their behalf.
How this shows up in your numbers
The visible consequence is the reject rate. An item a reader/sorter cannot read leaves straight-through processing and is handled by a person at the bank, which the bank charges for at its own fee schedule, above the bank's published acceptable rate.
Our own result is the reason we accept the extra development work. ProMark™ MICR toner is independently tested at a 0.1% reject rate or lower, on an IBM 3890 high-speed reader/sorter. On the same 100,000 checks a year, that is 100 items rather than 2,000 to 4,000.
Typical MICR toner in this industry rejects at 2% to 4%. On 100,000 checks a year, that range is 2,000 to 4,000 items handled by a person. The difference between the low end and the high end of that range is 2,000 items, and the cost of those items is set by your bank rather than by your toner supplier.
What to ask a toner supplier
- Is this toner formulated for my specific print engine, or for a family of machines?
- What signal strength does it produce in my engine, and who measured it?
- Was the measurement taken on a MICR verifier, and can I see the result?
- At what reject rate has this toner been tested, and on what reader/sorter?
- If the formulation changes, how will I be told?
A supplier who formulates per engine can answer all five without hesitation, because the answers are the reason their catalog has more part numbers than it otherwise would. That is the whole trade. More part numbers on our side, more margin on yours.
The 2% to 4% figure describes typical MICR toner in this industry. Your reject performance depends on your engine, supplies, stock, and maintenance position together.