Epson Waste Reset

[Rosham Rosebure]

Ifyou own an Epson printer, you may have encountered the dreaded "waste ink pad full" error message. This error occurs when the printer's waste ink pad, which collects excess ink during cleaning and maintenance, reaches its maximum capacity. When this happens, the printer stops working until the waste ink pad is replaced or reset.

Replacing the waste ink pad on an Epson printer can be a daunting task, but it's essential to keep your printer functioning properly. In this article, we'll guide you through the process of replacing and resetting the waste ink pad on your Epson printer, step-by-step.

Before we get started, it's important to note that replacing the waste ink pad on an Epson printer can be messy, and it may void your printer's warranty. If your printer is still under warranty, we recommend contacting Epson customer support for assistance.

The first step in replacing the waste ink pad on your Epson printer is to locate the pad itself. Depending on your printer model, the waste ink pad may be located in different areas of the printer. To find the waste ink pad, refer to your printer's user manual or search online for instructions specific to your printer model.

Once you've located the waste ink pad, check its condition. If the pad is heavily saturated with ink or is disintegrating, it's time to replace it. If the pad is only partially full, you may be able to reset the waste ink counter instead.

Before replacing the waste ink pad, it's essential to clean the area around the pad to avoid ink spills and ensure a clean work environment. Use a damp cloth or paper towel to wipe away any excess ink, and be sure to wear gloves to protect your hands.

To replace the waste ink pad on your Epson printer, you'll need to disassemble the printer and remove the old pad. Again, the process will vary depending on your printer model, so be sure to refer to your user manual or search online for instructions specific to your printer.

After replacing the waste ink pad, you'll need to reset the waste ink counter to clear the "waste ink pad full" error message. To do this, you'll need to enter your printer's service mode and run a waste ink pad counter reset utility.

INKCHIP provides the best software to reset your printer's waste ink pad counters. Just download our utility and with the WIC reset keys you can reset the ink pad counters to zero. It only takes a few seconds to easily reset your printer.

Using my Mac 10.7.5, does anyone know of a download that will reset the waste ink counter on my Epson Artisan 730 printer. I have changed the waste ink pads, but my 730 printer has locked me out until I change the waste ink counter back to 0. The printer screen message is:" A printer's ink pad is at the end of its life.Please contact Epson Support. Turn Off." Epson support says go to an Epson Service Center and have the machine serviced. The Service Center charges over $100 to do a reset. I found a reset program online but it was only used on PCs not Macs. Any help would be greatly appreciated, to get my printer back in service.

That out of the way, to answer your question there are Windows only utilities that will work to reset the printers waste ink counter and just need to be used to complete the reset. Once reset the printer can then be returned to the MacOS machine and not need the windows machine again (well, not until the waste counter hit maximum again).

Alternatively there's a MacOS compatible pay-per-reset option in the form of a utility called iWIC. This requires the purchase of a one-time digital key to complete the reset itself but the utility can be used without a key to read the waste counters and get some other information from the printer.

One critical thing to note though is that resetting and then ignoring the waste ink is a bit of a daft thing to do so if you do decide to reset, then consider replacing the waste pads or fitting something like a Printer Potty to you don't later discover you need a new carpet, etc...

I can't speak for any other brands, since I've always used Epsons, right from day one. But from what I can figure out, this 'function' is peculiar to Epsons, and is all part of their efforts to 'encourage' you to have your device serviced regularly (for outrageous sums of money!) at their approved 'service centres'.

As if selling you a device at a reasonable price, followed by gouging you, ad infinitum, with extortionate ink prices, wasn't enough, the WIC value - once it reaches a certain point - will cause your printer to just quit working, without warning. All you'll see in your wee display panel will be something along the lines of

There used to be a free reset utility for Epsons, years ago, that worked under Windows. I had to use it, several years ago, because one of my Epsons gave some very heavy-duty service for a couple of years printing photos.....and I eventually hit the WIC value.

I've never been able to find one that functioned under Linux, until now.....and, TBH, I don't print anything like as much these days. Following a browse around the web, I located a repo of .deb packages for the WICreset utility. I downloaded an age-related one for my daily driver - jrb's lite version of BK's Quirky April 64 - installed it, annnd.....it works perfectly.

Most after-market ink vendors nowadays will sell you these reset keys - single-use, I'm afraid, though there's NO 'expiry date' - for a small fee (a few dollars or pounds). Many people will just chuck away and buy new again, but I intend to hang onto my SX218 for a while longer yet. The printer works, the scanner works, the drivers I have for it give full functionality.....why add to the growing e-waste problem? (And most EPSON users will probably only ever need a reset key perhaps once - or maybe twice - in all the time they own one.)

Assuming you've learned about waste ink pads, the process of replacing the pads or redirecting the waste ink to an external tank/kit, is only half the job. If your printer started displaying the "service required" or "waste pads in printer have reached end of service life" error, you still need to reset the printers internal waste counter(s).

When this article was originally written (back in early 2005 or so) the situation regarding options was pretty poor and there were very few printers that had accessible waste pads, much less the chip equipped maintenance boxes. So things have changed considerably.

In early 2000 or so, Epson USA made an Ink Pad Reset (IPR) utility that would allow customers of some inkjet models to reset their waste ink counters and allegedly make use of the excess capacity likely to be available in the printers pads. Epson has since removed this utility and all newer versions from their site. The utilities were limited in compatibility and usage so this isn't as big a loss as it might appear.

The original SSC utility, is now ancient and has almost no utility for all except those with printers more than 17 years old and while it was compatible with what was a wide range of printers it only dealt with those really old printers.

For quite some time the only way anyone was able to reset waste counters was to use the official service utilities available to sevice centres that had found their way onto the wider web with various protections and limits removed. Use of these utilities was limited to earlier versions of Windows operating system and while these sorts of utilities are still appearing on eBay, etc... for newer models, they still require substantial technical knowledge to use.

In 2009 came the release of the pay per reset utility called "WICReset" which stands for Waste Ink Counter Reset. This new tool requires the purchase of a digital "key" (basically a credit) which then allows the user to reset the waste ink counter once. The tool started off somewhat shakily in the early years but has matured into an effective tool that is reasonably user friendly.

I've always really liked Epson printers. I bought my first one, an Epson C46, in my first year at Uni and after printing tens of thousands of pages with cheap replacement inks it's still going and still works pretty well. Sure, it had a kill-switch that meant for no reason it refused to work after a few thousand pages, but I fixed that with the excellent SSC Service Utility and just kept going. I've reset the waste ink counter five times now with no damage to the printer.

The C46 was really cheap (about 40 in about 2003), really loud and really slow and when I needed a new printer I of course got an Epson one, with wifi and a scanner thrown in for fun. I really liked it, until after about 8 weeks when all kinds of problems started kicking off. I wrote anextremely popular review about it on Amazon so I won't bore you here but once I started investigating things it was clear that SSC Service Utility wasn't going to fix the problem because Epson have added extra encryption to "encourage" you to buy a new printer. Loads of people suggested ways around the problem, none of the suggestions worked. It turns out that most people who make suggestions haven't used them and are just morons trying to tell you that you're an idiot to make their lives feel better. To add insult to injury Epson's engineers have cleverly disabled the fully functional scanner because the printer part of the box "required" a "service", aka a replacement. Silly.

I wrote to Epson to let them know how disappointed I was and got a pathetic identikit corporate response with an offer to rip me off even more.Here's the letter so make up your own mind, it's actually quite polite.

I did some more reading and it turns out that Epson's practice of deliberately disabling a fully functioning product at an artificially capped lifespan and deliberately stopping a user from fixing the problem is probably illegal under EU law, specifically the WEEE regulation on electronic waste, so I wrote to my MEP, Linda McAvan. Now I have to say she did a lot of hard work on this and I've earned a lot of respect for her but ultimately Epson are a big company with lots of money and I am just a citizen with the law on my side so really there was only going to be one winner here. At least I got a letter from the Office of Fair Trade essentially saying I was a pathetic little runt and that I should accept my place in the world.

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