Waste Ink – lings

Waste ink kits and modifications will help you keep your printer running more smoothly but unless you have a reset utility to deal with the waste-ink or protection counter your printer will remain a brick.

With this in mind I have been spending an inordinate amount of time looking for reset utilities, especially for the newer Epson inkjet printers. Some of the information I’ve developed is disheartening, while other intel’ causes outright concern, so it seemed appropriate to provide an update on what’s out there.

Epson R285

Epson have been busy churning out new printers again so I’ve recently acquired an R285 (the UK version of the R290/R280) and checked it out with a view to modifying it.

Unfortunately as one of the newer printers, the R285 has been made harder to reset (ie: the IPR_A10 utility will not work with it). So, with all this in mind I’ve created a new R285 instruction set for fitting a waste ink kit and resetting the protection counter on this printer.

After a bit more digging it was possible to get hold of an IPR (Ink Pad Reset) utility for the RX680 which is one of the newer printers that hasn’t been covered by the older A10 IPR.

Unfortunately the news on this is not good…

Epson have obviously decided that the consumer need even greater protection from themselves when it comes to waste ink pads and have adopted an activation strategy which you would expect in situations where software piracy was an issue, not someone wishing to service their own printer.