Waste ink absorber nearly full

[The Flying Tench]

This message comes up when I try and print now. Canon's authorised service company would charge me £130 to put it right when a new printer would only cost about the same. I get the impression that it is all a 'con' and there are codes I've found from the web which hopefully will stop the message coming up. But I still have a slight concern that the absorber pad might really be full! Presumably it would be dicey to take the printer to bits?

 

I just wondered if anyone has experience of this kind of problem.

[Chris Goddard]

I have recently!! It is a small pad under the park position for the head. i simply used a pair of tweezers to remove it and dabbed it with a piece of kitchen towel and replaced it! I did this on an Epson 300 but found instructions were VERY similar! I also downloaded an INK monitoring prog which stops the monitor working. But again this was for an Epson not sure about the Canons? the prog was the "SSC Printer Utility. Site was VERY informative indeed!!! Have a look here http://www.ssclg.com/cgi-bin/netboard/netb...p;fct=gotoforum

[chesters1]

some printers are extremely hard to open being assembled by very small people but working slowly with a thin screwdriver pushing in the clips and catches it will eventually open.don't unscrew any screws before you get the cover of as they most likely aren't anything to do with the cover itself.

you can as said above get the sponge out fairly easily and wash it in the sink .if you can avoid removing screw or parts do so but as you say its cheaper to just buy a new printer if you bugger it up.

the monitoring is purely software and no doup't theres plenty of sites on the WWW to tell you how to reset it strip it down and a myriad of other things.

a search with the machines number and "tips" or "help" in the search area will bring up plenty i bet.

 

i'v just chucked out a epson 830u ,unlike hp the cartridges dont have the ink jets on them and once they dry out (the heads)their buggered ,back to the hp 970cxi which luckily shares carts with my 1220c

 

this forum looks very good ,note the "devil" hopefully pinned somewhere is the method to remove it and send it to hell

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1975

 

this looks like the bit your after but check which printer it is ,theres no harm in entering the diags on a printer so long as you dont fiddle too much, post 6 is the one your after and try it anyway LOTS of printers share the same internals and software eproms ,if the sequence to get into the diags doesent work with yours then look for another models button sequence.

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=165

 

little harm will come from resetting the ink full counter most will just overflow and evaporate but i suggest the sponge is bone dry anyway due to central heating or the warm weather and all that remains is the ink goo rather than liquid ink.

ps if you decide or need to wash the sponge wear rubber gloves it stains skin even though its water based

 

the ink pad monitor is purely a just legal built in redundancy ploy ,the makers dont give a hoot if it overflows and leaks onto your best tablecloth after the warranty is up but "suggesting" it may brings in bucks.

i remember when inkjets just came onto the uk market donkeys years ago i had a famouse make beast which had a seperate washing tank .this was very expensive to replace and its contents not told to me by the uk version of the makers site ,a quick browse around the american site and a download of the material safety form revealed it was just distilled water with minute amount of acid to enable the pins on the level meter to work ,distilled water with a drop of distilled vinegar did the exact same thing at a very small fraction of the cost ,a fore runner of cheap printers expencive carts we see now.

 

we have already software built in to printers that interrogate the ink refils to see if they are genuine (easily overcome) but i predict in the future that a number needs to be obtained from the manufatureres via a code on the cart to enable it to work

Edited May 5, 2007 by chesters1

[The Flying Tench]

Thanks both of you. I think I have located the absorber pad. Incredible that the girl in teh service company said they would need to replace the whole print unit for that bit of foam!

[chesters1]

you still probably will have to reset the counter

[glennk]

I download the program for my epson that Chris talks of. I didnt even need to clean the ink thingy. It Worked well for a long time untill something else completely unrelated went wrong.