How many pages can my printer print?

How many pages of a single black dot can you print from a laser printer before some component eventually fails?

• If the components in a printer do not degrade with each printed page, the number of pages of a single period is just limited by the capacity of the toner cartridge. However, the printer also consists of other components such as the photoreceptive drum and the fuser, both with a limited lifespan. How many "damage" would printing a sparsely filled page cause to a consumer laser printer?

• Answer:

  Printers and toner cartridges are built as cheaply as possible.   Each printer is rated for so many pages per month before the plastic gears and rubber rollers wear out.   Each print cartridge is rated for so many average density pages.   If you try to print just a dot, the gears and drum will wear out long before you run out of toner. Long ago I had an actual Model 15, then later a Model 35 Teletype, ancient printers that could do 6 and 10 characters per second, very noisily.   But they were built like tanks, out of real steel.   One gear made out of fiber, to reduce noise, but otherwise most everything was steel.   They could probably run non-stop for 20 years before needing an overhaul.  Every month you'd have to spray some oil around the insides, but that was about it.