[YLUG] Epson print cartridges

[David Harker]

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Roger Leigh wrote:
> David Harker <david.harker at oneiria.co.uk> writes:
> 
>> I look after the PC of a member of my family for her and had to resort
>> to google when all 3 of the colour ink cartridges in her epson decided
>> simultaneously that they had run out despite barely any use. To cut a
>> long story short I'm now the proud owner of a little gadget to reset the
>> "ink level" (read: "death clock") chips in them. I don't have an epson
>> and have no idea if it works yet but if anyone else does and has
>> experienced a similar problem then I'd be happy to bring it along one
>> evening and zap you. Would be interesting to see how much more ink you
>> can get out of those things.
> 
> The chip should store the amount of ink used; IIRC it actually counts
> the volume of droplets fired, which is in the picolitre range.  Unless
> there is a fault, it should deliberately leave some ink in the
> cartridge (though not much).  This is in order to prevent air and dirt
> being drawn into the printhead, which would happen if you drained it
> completely.  The nozzles in the head are very fine precision
> piezoelectric crystals, and dirt will clog them (potentially
> irreversibly).
> 
> If the chip is definitely wrong, it might be safer to return the
> cartridge for a replacement.  If you reset the chip when the cartridge
> is half-full, for example, you do risk ruining the printer when it
> gets fully drained.
> 
> If you aren't using it already, the "escputil" tool does the ink level
> checking for Epson printers on Linux.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Roger

Well if that is the case (sounds reasonable to me) then why have all
three cartridges simultaneously died while very nearly full? Smells more
than a bit fishy to me! They aren't "half-full", they're about 90% full
*minimum*. Really not used at all past a bit of testing and a couple of
copies. There is absolutely no way that they're even *close* to running
out. I'm still crying foul play by Epson.

David
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