Fixing my own printer – Epson CX4600

I’m not the type to “do a Snoopy dance” i.e. dance around in glee about something as Snoopy the dog of The Peanuts fame.

I have a virtual model of that going on though, I’m giddy inside with pleasure.

I had troubles with printing on my Epson CX4600 in the last few months, but didn’t do anything about it besides grumble and do a cleaning the heads session here and there. I grumbled and grumbled more the last month or so, and have been sick inside over how much “ink” the printer uses up to ‘clean’ and how much ‘ink’ I KNOW, since I have ears to hear with, is still in those cartridges that the printer/computer say are “empty”.

I got so tired of it after I changed the cartidges with my very last color set last week, and blonk, chug, blon, chug, chug, chug … the printer wouldn’t print right and went from FULL to EMTPY in three #%@$#%#$@ sessions of trying to clean the nozzles, etc via the printer utility in the computer.

I found a site a very techy usefulness:

www.fixyourownprinter.com/

There you can find info on your printer, and I found scads of ideas and comfort for my Epson CX4600, and eventually came away wishing I hadn’t gotten rid of that Epson Color 800 from years before, knowing that I would have the knowledge and tools to fix it now. 🙁

I ordered a cleaning kit from the above website. I got ideas from the forum, and on that site as well they did have a page about building a chip resetter … but I don’t have the tools to make one myself. I then found a reference to someone saying “they are cheap on ebay” and wouldn’t you know, it’s true.

I also found a service utility to download to use in place of the traditional Epson one. With it you can “freeze” ink levels, so that the computer will keeps churning out ink until it’s really out. In order to be able to use it though, you have to have INK in your cartridges. What’s that all mean? Newer cartridges all have an IC “chip” on one end, and that’s what the printer reads and writes to about ink levels. It’d be nice if it really, truly worked, but it’s meant to keep people from refilling their cartridges mostly, and that backfires on people who don’t refill, since the chip doesn’t rely on what’s in the cartridge, but on how it’s been used. I can go back in time and recall cartridges that I threw out that I KNEW there was still INK INSIDE, you can hear it slosh around, heavily so even, and it’s maddening to see the printer reject it as “empty” … ugh. My days of that are over.

I had saved the last cartridges, when I had just changed them this past week.

Earlier this week my package of Epson cleaner came in the mail. I couldn’t use it without INK in my cartridges though, to be able to perform a cleaning cycle or two or three or more.

I had also gone to ebay and seached out chip resetters and found one auctioner that had them and other things for Epson’s, like the right inks and cartridges to refill over and over … and that is where I got the thing that came in the mail TODAY!!!! The Virtual Snoopy Dance is about this device, this sweet little device that is so awesome.

It’s just plastic and has prongs (contact pins) to enable you to “reset” the IC Cartridges … it has some little adapter pieces to put on for how your cartridge is made, and for mine it makes a nice cushy spot to line up the cartrige into and plunk it right down for a red flashing LED lite on the device to come on saying “I have contact” and then it goes “Green solid” when it’s successfully cleared the chip, “reset it” in other words.

I firstly tried my old black cartridge, and VOILA it worked! So I quickly did the rest of the old color cartridges and they all reset fine. I then turned on my printer and took out the “empty” cartridges that were in there already, barely used, mind you. I put them down and popped in each of the four cartridges I’d just reset. “Churn, Churn, Churn,” my printer said … meanwhile I opened up the window for the SSC Service Utility and made sure my printer model, which I was using, was chosen, and then went to see the “printer report” for it and YES IT SAYS I have 100% levels in each cartridge! Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.

I still need to clean the printer out, but I am able to print black documents and some of the colors. It’s the printer heads, that whole area is a mess, I did use a wire to pull up bunch of matted-with-ink-Hair out of there last week, after the fact of my “cartridges being empty” so that I couldn’t perform “printer cleanings” anymore … but that’s why I got the “fixyourprinter” Epson Cleaning kit. I’ll spend my time doing that later, so that it’ll have time to work without my interferring … so over night it’ll work.

I am so very pleased with the chip resetter, at this point, and the SSC Service Utility as well. I have used that with my Epson Picture Mate Deluxe too, and can “freeze” ink levels, and have, so that I can squeeze as much ink out of that cartridge as possible. I also have a good visual window to look at in the SSC Service Utility anytime I’m connected to that printer to see the individual color levels, which can be done for other printers too, but it’s more meaningful there than it seems to be in the Epson Utility.

All of the above I found via info on the link to fixyourownprinter, which I found via Google.