External Waste-Ink tanks and cleaning

If your printer comes with a maintenance tank, you may use a large format chip resetter to reset your maintenance tank chip to read empty. If you wish to do it more than once, periodically check the waste ink level in the tank to ensure that it does not overfill with waste ink. Chip resetters are available on-line. Be sure to purchase one specifically for your large format printer.

For desktop printers we recommend attaching an external Waste-Ink Bottle. It prevents the waste pads inside the printer from filling up when changing inks and your printer last longer. How-To-Install Instructions for certain printers become available on this web site.

Having an external waste ink bottle in place you do not have to worry about the waste pads inside your printer however, do NOT run more than 3 cleaning cycles in one process, it may makes things just worse.

Epson printers are using 3 durations of cleaning; long, medium and short. The short one occurs after the third cleaning cycle and this mode will only change to the long or medium again if a print was made. Short cleaning cylcles can block the nozles, which is most likely the reason why people get frustrated after running cleaning cycles for hours without positiv results. It comes worse and you even can destroy the print heads by doing so. 

After two but maximum three cleaning cycles print a full color test image (our print_head_recovery_90.pdf file is a good one) or such as a color profile, calibration page or some pattern similar to that in a high resolution. That is the proper way of trying to get all nozzles firing. In case you have just switch the inks it is even higly recommend to let the printer rest for a couple of hours between the cleaning procedures, gives the inks the time to settle down and allows remaining air particles disappaer.

Missing nozzles after switching the brand of the inks is often mistakenly explained as clogging the nozzles. Most likely the inks are not settled down enough due to remaining air particles while shaking the bottles or cartridges. There are a couple of possibillities to get air into the system but airbubbles trapped in the print head may be one of the most difficult once to remove quickly.

To know the difference between "clogging nozzles" or "blocking air particles" you need to watch the pattern of you nozzle tests regular on a daily base. If the pattern of missing nozzles never change a bit you may have clogged nozzles or the head is dead, if the pattern change all the time there is hope because it is probably an air issue.