Question Questions about MICR Toner please help

[Tug04935]

Hopefully this is the right place for this if not please move. I am the IT person for the Human Resources department of a very big university. Our HP printer that we use to print checks broke down and needs to be replaced. Today we had a meeting about getting a replacement and the payroll people said they use a special magnetic toner (MICR Toner) to print checks. This is new to me I never heard of it and I was trying my best to make it seem like I knew and understood what they were talking about but in reality I am lost. Can all laser printers accept this MICR Toner? Is it just a standard toner cartridge with a special toner, if so I would imagine you can use this special toner in any laser printer? How do you find out if MICR Toner is made for your printer? I don't want the university to spend money on a printer only to find out that MICR toner isn't made for it and therefore useless.

 

[clarkjd]

Hopefully this is the right place for this if not please move. I am the IT person for the Human Resources department of a very big university. Our HP printer that we use to print checks broke down and needs to be replaced. Today we had a meeting about getting a replacement and the payroll people said they use a special magnetic toner (MICR Toner) to print checks. This is new to me I never heard of it and I was trying my best to make it seem like I knew and understood what they were talking about but in reality I am lost. Can all laser printers accept this MICR Toner? Is it just a standard toner cartridge with a special toner, if so I would imagine you can use this special toner in any laser printer? How do you find out if MICR Toner is made for your printer? I don't want the university to spend money on a printer only to find out that MICR toner isn't made for it and therefore useless.

The account number and the routing number on the check are printed with MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) ink in order for machine reading of this information. I don't think that you would want to print the entire check with only a MICR toner.I hink you would need a special laser printer that would accept both a regular toner and a MICR toner cartridge at the ame time. I am not aware of any consumer grade laser printers with this capability. Your best bet would be to contact HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc., for any laser printer models that would fill your requirements.

 

[Corwin65]

Most companies now buy their checks pre-printed with routing number account and check number all printed with MICR ink. This allows printing of the unique information on a laser printer. We use three trays, one tray loaded for one checking account, one loaded for another account, and one plain paper.

 

[hang-the-9]

The account number and the routing number on the check are printed with MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) ink in order for machine reading of this information. I don't think that you would want to print the entire check with only a MICR toner.I hink you would need a special laser printer that would accept both a regular toner and a MICR toner cartridge at the ame time. I am not aware of any consumer grade laser printers with this capability. Your best bet would be to contact HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc., for any laser printer models that would fill your requirements.

There are, and were, a bunch of printer models with MICR toner, a lot of the toner cartridges were actually refilled by companies with the special toner. I worked at company that used HP 2xxxx and 4xxxx models and we had MICR toner for both models. Those were just normal off the shelf printers, although granted not the cheap home use models. I don't think any of the toner we used was actually branded by HP. It actually caused some issues with printer reliability but that is what they used.