I can't answer your questions about cost .. but here's a tip that I discovered that helped us save money in our testing environment. The printer knows the difference between the regular toner cartridge and MICR cartridge and would force us to switch cartridges when we were testing our app. I visually compared the two cartridges and discovered the only difference was a little hole that was open on one and closed on the other. I cut out a little label and covered the open hole on the regular cartridge and now the printer thinks it's a MICR cartridge and doesn't object anymore when I'm testing check printing. Kinda like the old days of putting the read/write tab on a 5-1/4" floppy!!

Cathy




>Sorry if these questions seem novice, but I'm new to MICR...
>
>These questions deal with someone printing checks using blank check stock...I'm looking into the possibility of printing checks with the routing/acct/check number symbols using the MICR font and MICR toner...
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>1) Suppose the check has two parts...the upper third is the check itself, bottom two-thirds are transactions and other information. It seems like a 'waste' of the MICR toner for just the line with the routing #, acct #, etc. Any comments or alternatives?
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>Someone suggested to run the blank stock through a program that merely prints the MICR symbols (using the MICR cartridge) at the bottom...and then supply the check #s to the 'normal' check printing program that prints everything else using the normal cartridge. At first, this sounded a bit kludgy, but the more I think about it, maybe it's not so bad (assuming the process is managed correctly).
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>2) Follow up to #1...is there any 'smarts' to the usage of magnetic toner that if you use a non-MICR font, it uses the toner more 'economically' than when it uses an MICR font? (I realize that might be a dumb question, but didn't know if use of an MICR font draws from a part of the toner in the same way color and blank ink are drawn from inkjet cartridges).
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>3) If I use normal toner to print the MICR symbols using an MICR font...can the bank still read it? I realize they can't use the normal magnetic process, but was curious if they'd charge more to read it manually, or if they'd just flat-out reject the check.
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>4) Does anyone have any idea how much cheaper blank check stock is, compared to pre-printed checks? (I know that MICR toner is roughly 2 to 2.5 times more expensive than normal toner...just trying to get a handle on costs for both methods over the course of a year, given roughly 10,000 checks per month).
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>Thanks in advance for any input/insights...
>Kevin