{"id":287,"date":"2006-07-07T13:54:26","date_gmt":"2006-07-07T17:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2006\/07\/07\/fixing-my-own-printer-epson-cx4600\/"},"modified":"2006-07-07T13:54:26","modified_gmt":"2006-07-07T17:54:26","slug":"fixing-my-own-printer-epson-cx4600","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2006\/07\/07\/fixing-my-own-printer-epson-cx4600\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing my own printer &#8211; Epson CX4600"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not the type to &#8220;do a Snoopy dance&#8221; i.e. dance around in glee about something as Snoopy the dog of The Peanuts fame.<\/p>\n<p>I have a virtual model of that going on though, I&#8217;m giddy inside with pleasure.<\/p>\n<p>I had troubles with printing on my Epson CX4600 in the last few months, but didn&#8217;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 &#8220;ink&#8221; the printer uses up to &#8216;clean&#8217; and how much &#8216;ink&#8217; I KNOW, since I have ears to hear with, is still in those cartridges that the printer\/computer say are &#8220;empty&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8230; the printer wouldn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>I found a site a very techy usefulness:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fixyourownprinter.com\/\" title='Fix Your Own Printer' target=\"_blank\">www.fixyourownprinter.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t gotten rid of that Epson Color 800 from years before, knowing that I would have the knowledge and tools to fix it now. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8230; but I don&#8217;t have the tools to make one myself. I then found a reference to someone saying &#8220;they are cheap on ebay&#8221; and wouldn&#8217;t you know, it&#8217;s true.<\/p>\n<p>I also found a service utility to download to use in place of the traditional Epson one. With it you can &#8220;freeze&#8221; ink levels, so that the computer will keeps churning out ink until it&#8217;s really out. In order to be able to use it though, you have to have INK in your cartridges. What&#8217;s that all mean? Newer cartridges all have an IC &#8220;chip&#8221; on one end, and that&#8217;s what the printer reads and writes to about ink levels. It&#8217;d be nice if it really, truly worked, but it&#8217;s meant to keep people from refilling their cartridges mostly, and that backfires on people who don&#8217;t refill, since the chip doesn&#8217;t rely on what&#8217;s in the cartridge, but on how it&#8217;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&#8217;s maddening to see the printer reject it as &#8220;empty&#8221; &#8230; ugh. My days of that are over.<\/p>\n<p>I had saved the last cartridges, when I had just changed them this past week.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week my package of Epson cleaner came in the mail. I couldn&#8217;t use it without INK in my cartridges though, to be able to perform a cleaning cycle or two or three or more.<\/p>\n<p>I had also gone to ebay and seached out chip resetters and found one auctioner that had them and other things for Epson&#8217;s, like the right inks and cartridges to refill over and over &#8230; 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.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just plastic and has prongs (contact pins) to enable you to &#8220;reset&#8221; the IC Cartridges &#8230; 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 &#8220;I have contact&#8221; and then it goes &#8220;Green solid&#8221; when it&#8217;s successfully cleared the chip, &#8220;reset it&#8221; in other words.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;empty&#8221; cartridges that were in there already, barely used, mind you. I put them down and popped in each of the four cartridges I&#8217;d just reset. &#8220;Churn, Churn, Churn,&#8221; my printer said &#8230; 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 &#8220;printer report&#8221; for it and YES IT SAYS I have 100% levels in each cartridge! Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.<\/p>\n<p>I still need to clean the printer out, but I am able to print black documents and some of the colors. It&#8217;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 &#8220;cartridges being empty&#8221; so that I couldn&#8217;t perform &#8220;printer cleanings&#8221; anymore &#8230; but  that&#8217;s why I got the &#8220;fixyourprinter&#8221; Epson Cleaning kit. I&#8217;ll spend my time doing that later, so that it&#8217;ll have time to work without my interferring &#8230; so over night it&#8217;ll work.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;freeze&#8221; 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&#8217;m connected to that printer to see the individual color levels, which can be done for other printers too, but it&#8217;s more meaningful there than it seems to be in the Epson Utility.<\/p>\n<p>All of the above I found via info on the link to fixyourownprinter, which I found via Google.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not the type to &#8220;do a Snoopy dance&#8221; 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&#8217;m giddy inside with pleasure. I had troubles with printing on my Epson CX4600 in the last few months, but didn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1128,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2010\/10\/20\/dvd-software-printers-and-scanners\/","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":0},"title":"DVD Software, Printers and Scanners","author":"Maisy","date":"Wednesday, October 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"My laptop (Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025) supposedly has Roxio Creator 2010 on it, pre-installed, well IS SUPPOSED to have ... according to documentation on this model. I don't have it. I have Roxio Burn, that's it. There is no \"DVD Creation\" sort of software on this laptop minus Microsoft's Movie Maker\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computers&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":171,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2005\/08\/24\/music-and-photos\/","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":1},"title":"Music and Photos","author":"Maisy","date":"Wednesday, August 24, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"This week, on Friday precisely, I am supposed to get something I ordered on eBay ... a new soundcard. It's one that has an external interface box, and will allow me to get my records and tapes into my computer finally :) I have some vinyl coming in the mail\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7142,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2024\/03\/03\/hp-1020-shared-as-printer-on-network\/","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":2},"title":"HP 1020 shared as printer on network","author":"Maisy","date":"Sunday, March 3, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I was trying to share my HP 1020 over my big computer, which is always on. It's a dumb printer just prints local. On my laptop I could get into the share server but would get \"Credentials Supplied Are Not Sufficient\" when trying to use \"connect\" Eventually I got it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computers&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8714,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2026\/07\/27\/my-printer-is-bonkers\/","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":3},"title":"My printer is bonkers","author":"Maisy","date":"Monday, July 27, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Canon TS9521C had a paper jam when I was trying to print the other week. I got paper out of the back that was jammed, but that didn't let the printer print still. Still jammed. I said \"well turn yourself off\" and did that to it. Then it sat for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Devices&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Devices","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/devices\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2608,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2016\/04\/18\/found-my-palm-vx\/","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":4},"title":"Found my Palm Vx!","author":"Maisy","date":"Monday, April 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A few weeks ago we were looking through our storage, I was hoping to find a few things. This week we sorted through some more things and there it was! Well, that was great, really great. Getting it to work again, not as great. I brought it home, put it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/20160418_203202-1.jpg?fit=799%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/20160418_203202-1.jpg?fit=799%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/20160418_203202-1.jpg?fit=799%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/20160418_203202-1.jpg?fit=799%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":884,"url":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/2009\/11\/19\/leap-frog-tag-pen-problem\/","url_meta":{"origin":287,"position":5},"title":"Leap Frog TAG pen problem","author":"Maisy","date":"Thursday, November 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We bought a Leap Frog TAG Reading system for one of my boys in the past year. I haven't connected it very often but when I did I really liked how it worked for parents. My boy that uses it is past the age that my first two children were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computers&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyperthinking.us\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}