Inkjet Care for Epson and other inkjet printers

by Yisroel Goodman

Leaving your printer on takes very little power. Every so often the printer sends a signal to cycle the ink in the heads so it doesn't clog. If you turn your printer off, the next time you turn it on it will do a cleaning which wastes a lot of ink. Considering that some companies give you only 3-7 ml to begin with, you don't want to waste 2-3 ml on a cleaning. The excess ink is soaked up by the waste pad beneath the printer. When the waste pad is full, the printer stops working. It will cost more than a new printer to repair it. Shutting off an inkjet between uses can actually shorten its life.

Never connect the printer to a power strip and turn it off. When you shut down a printer by pressing its power button, it goes through a shut down routine designed to clear the ink from the heads. If you use a power strip, it won't go through this routine.

If you leave the printer off for extended periods of time, the ink in the heads will clog and you will have to throw the printer away. Someone I know with a Canon (though this can happen with any inkjet) had to have the heads replaced twice within the first few months before the Canon tech told her to stop turning it off. Since then it has worked perfectly for over a year.

Incidentally, the Canon tech had to replace her ink cartridges in order to run a print test. He used compatible cartridges. When she questioned this he said, "They're all the same." If a Canon tech can use compatible cartridges, so can you. Check out the savings available right on this site.

Warning about running out of ink with Epson printers

What can go wrong?
1) You print a lot of photos or pages requiring heavy ink use. The printer estimates the ink remaining based on the number of pages printed and average coverage per page.
2) You remove and re-insert a cartridge. The printer might be fooled into thinking it is a new cartridge and reset the counter to full. The ink will get used faster than the printer anticipates.

This is why you must take special precautions with our re-usable cartridges. The chips are designed to reset to full upon re-insertion in the printer. The typical scenario is this: Our cartridges give you 20 ml of ink, which is roughly triple the 7 ml Epson gives you. The printer assumes it has the same amount as Epson. When the printer decides that 5-6 ml has been used, it gives the out-of-ink warning. You look at the cartridge, decide there is plenty of ink left and put it back in. The printer assumes you have put in a new cartridge. When it believes another 5-6 ml has been used, it gives the warning again and you again re-insert the same cartridge. At some point your cartride holds less then 7 ml of ink. If you re-insert it at this point, the printer will believe it is full and continue printing past the point of empty. So before you re-insert a used cartridge, make sure there is plenty of ink - at least half the cartridge. The back of the ink tanks are transparent so you can see ho much ink remains. Don't risk your printer trying to save a dollar's worth of ink!

What to do if your printer stops printing a color?
Call Epson and have them walk you through solving the problem. Under no circumstances should you tell them you used third-party ink cartridges. They will sieze upon this as an excuse to stop talking to you. If they can't solve the problem over the phone and your printer is still under warranty, they will fedex you a new one. You will then return the bad one to them in the same box - removing the cartridges from the printer first.