Epson printer waste ink tank conter restrictions

Epson printer waste ink tank counter

Epson Eco Tank printers prevent regular maintenance by consumers or third parties by imposing artificial DRM barriers to printer maintenance functions.

Epson eco tanks are continuous ink feed inkjet printers.

Said printers require an ink waste tank for regular operation due to the necessity of pumping some ink out somewhere to prime the heads and executing head cleaning operations.

This ink waste tank is something that requires regular cleaning (approximately every 6000 prints on an Epson L395 printer).

The printer has counter after which it will refuse to continue printing due to the risk of this tank spilling ink everywhere, which is a valid concern.

And while this tank is buried (in the case of the L395) behind considerable disassembly of the printer, making it not a consumer serviceable part, it is possible to properly service the tank if one takes the printer to a service technician or one is experienced disassembling electronics.

But Epson does not include any way to reset the waste tank counter, rendering the printer unusable even after properly serviced without the necessary maintenance software. And when contacted directly and directly asked for the maintenance software Epson directs you to their service centers instead of allowing you to repair your own device. This is an anti competitive, anti repair and anti consumer practice as it puts great difficulty for consumers wanting to repair their own devices out of warranty and puts great difficulty with technicians that now have to find leaked or sketchy software to be able to perform basic maintenance on a device the customer owns.

This has resulted in a lot of people are selling waste ink counter reset as a service selling an artificial software block removal as a paywall barrier to basic maintenance as shown in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj4eGhzW_pQ

This situation exposes customers to shady business practicies and potentially malware infected software as many of these reset providers aren't credible or verifiable legitimate service providers, it is not hard to find many of these operating over telegram or whatsapp. All of this is unnecessary as Epson could just provide the required maintenance software with a disclaimer of accountability on user error during maintenance if not performed by an authorized service provider.

While this article focuses on Epson printers and their waste ink tank counter, Printer manufacturers such as Canon and HP have also been known to engage in anti repair, anti competitive, anti consumer practicies that have lead to many scandals over the years yet they continue to do it. You can read more about this in the following articles:

https://buymeonce.com/blogs/articles-tips/people-printers-planned-obsolescence/

https://sciencepost.fr/fabricants-dimprimantes-vises-plainte-obsolescence-programmee-tromperie/

https://www.techradar.com/news/the-chip-shortage-is-now-even-affecting-printer-ink-cartridges