A method controlling toner age in a developer housing including: recording a latent image in a predefined image frame on an imaging surface; and generating a purge patch in an unused portion of the predefined image frame. Other features include generating an inline purge signal to initiate generating of the purge patch; recording the purge patch includes scaling the purge patch to fit in the unused portion of the predefined image frame; activating or inactivating the generating of the purge patch based upon an amount of unused portion of the image frame.