Epson Blues

So long time ago, when I worked in print house I've been faced the same problem. We tried to sort this mess out. In vain, regardless we'd wasted a lot of cartridges. Then we brought this machine to service center (another town). Service man pushed three buttons over printer panel just in moment when power has been turned on. Since then printer operated smoothly. He'd explained us that there was a secret combination for printer initial resetting. After some negotiations and arguments that it's too expensive for us to make a long distance business trip for such a simple procedure, director of service center agreed to discover us that key's combination. Unfortunately I forgot it now, plus I think every specific model of printer has its own. So your supposition is proper. Try out search or make a call to service.

Every good luck to you.

p.s. Do not leave printer in idle for long.

Thank you caramba, there are only three buttons on my printer and i can try out all the possible combinations. Do you remember exactly when to key in the combination, is it right after power on or should i wait for the printer to boot up completely (takes about 40-50 sec after power on)....

At the same time when it begins to take a first breath. Ours printer was professional (A2) and cartridges were as large as VHS cassette. But this trick was workable with small printers as well. There were about 5 buttons on panel. It was 8 years ago.

Some set of suggestions/advices for future.

Every time when jet printer is initializing there is a standard procedure for cartridge nozzles' clearance which is presuming waste of a lot of costly inks. So try do not turn your printer off ever.

Wasted ink are gathered in a special niche(sink) where are placed fabric tampons for absorbing a liquid inks. When this sink is occurred to be overwhelmed it may cause the printer stalling as there are a measurement means to detect when inks appearing over printer electronic circuit board. At this case there should be fulfilled procedure for inks removing off board by means of non aggressive disolvent (C2H5OH). Since then only, printer might be resetted properly.

At that time I worked in Print House we used to cut this sink off from the printer bottom side and to put under printer simple plastic bucket for wasted inks dropping in. To be truth ours printers look quite ugly, but worked smoothly and needn't any resetting at all.

So do not rush to make nozzles' cleaning so often. There should be a pretty long pause between for wasted inks complete absorbing.

Good luck again.

I appreciate your advice, I am not a print guy and you have given me a good bit of insight into how these ink jets function. I did see the ink sinks under the nozzles and they had a pool of ink sitting there, the printer is sparingly used. I got it in 2007, and after using it for a few days I let it sit idle for 8 -9 months. The cartridges did not dry out at all and it worked normally after that big hibernation. So as I see, the printer is well designed to keep ink from drying out during storage however, as you mentioned, it must be wasting ink on every start up.

Print cartridges are now date stamped and will expire so you can't refill them--HP, I believe came up with this so you can't refill the cartridges yourself. I just bought a Dell all-in one this summer that doesn't do this--We had a discussion with a guy at Staples about it--There is a marking on the ink cartridges, but I can't remember what to spot for the expiration dates--Maybe research it.

Anyway it doesn't pay to stock up on ink cartridges just to have them expire with out a drop of ink out of them.

NICE, HUH????!!!!

http://www.hp.com/pageyield/articles/us/en/InkExpiration.html BLAH BLAH BLAH!

My print cartridges are stamped November 09, so i guess thats in order and since they are less than 10 prints old, there would be enough juice left. I do not want to buy new ones as it will make more sense to just get a new (surely not Epson) printer....!

To use an "out-of-date" cartridge: remove computer from internet, reset date. Turn on printer, synchronise printer clock...

(Personally, I use laser printers wherever possible - no hassle after sitting around unused, prints can be handled without worrying about damp fingers, cheaper consumables...)

My friend and Master who I was an apprentice under goes into fits with weird spasms and expletives about HP--The head quarters in Colorado is a planned pilgrimage of his, so he can launch everything he had bought from them through their lobby window----Oh, I just laugh!

I learned the date stamping from him--He stocked up on ink and tried to use it sometime later and found that little gem. Then he and I went shopping for flash drives and we each bought a Dell all-in-one--Partially because of the date stamping of ink cartridges, the rest because of the great deal.

We should start a company and manufacture printers that have screw top ink wells and gallon jugs of ink included. The ink cartridge Nazis would kill us, though and I don't want to die yet.