Jim Rossman: A reader warning on inkjet printer cleaning

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This week, we follow up on the topic of cleaning your inkjet printer. I received this message from a reader.

“Your recent column about clogged inkjet nozzles left something out that I experienced recently. I have an Epson ET-2760 inkjet printer. It is about 5 years old, and I probably need to clean the nozzles 2-3 times a year.

"A couple weeks ago, it would not print and displayed a message that read, 'Ink pad nearly full.' The message disappeared after I rebooted the printer. Looking online, apparently, there is a small ink pad/tank that collects the excess ink used to clean the nozzles and when it is full, it needs to be replaced.

"I called Epson and a customer service person told me the warning would appear several times before the tank was full. At that point, the printer would no longer print. She also said that replacement tanks were NOT available from Epson or anyone else. My only option was to send the printer to an Epson tech center. It would take three weeks and cost $45 or more depending on whether they found other issues.

"I haven’t needed to clean my nozzles since the warning appeared and now I hope I don’t have to for a long while. Any other thoughts?”

Every time you clean the print nozzles on an inkjet printer, it flushes ink through the nozzles to flush out dried ink. All the ink that gets flushed through the system has to end up somewhere. On most inkjets, there is a tank for the waste ink. Epson has a tank with a sponge pad inside it. When the printer senses the pad is getting full, you’ll start getting warning messages. Once the pad is completely full, the printer stops working.

As the reader found out, Epson will replace the pad if you send in the printer.

You can buy third-party replacement pads from Amazon. You can also search on YouTube for videos on how to replace the pad on your specific printer. The videos I watched showed an easy replacement with just a screwdriver in about two minutes.

Where things get tricky is telling the printer you’ve changed out the pad. The Waste Ink Counter system needs to be reset. There are utilities available online to reset the waste ink counter system. I haven’t used any of the utilities myself, so I’m not going to mention them here. You can find them easily enough in the how-to videos.

I also saw a replacement pad on Amazon for $20 that comes with a one-time use software key to reset the counter.

Epson doesn’t sell the pads to the public and doing this repair yourself will likely void any warranty you have left, but if you are like this reader, and your printer is out of warranty, you don’t have much to lose by trying to fix it yourself.