ET-2720 Waste Ink pad

Every once in a while, you may notice that your Epson printer’s ink light is on or flashing. While this light is on, your printer will not allow you to do anything. First, you have to plug your printer into your computer with a USB cord.

If you’re using a PC, you may get a message along the lines of “the ink pad has reached its end of life”. Then it’ll probably prompt you to contact Epson’s support team for further assistance. If you’re using a Mac, you’ll probably need to install Epson’s original driver first, rather than just adding the printer to your desktop. As soon as you do, you’ll get the same message that the PC users did.

If you do contact Epson’s support team about the issue, they usually just encourage you to buy a new ink pad or pay them to fix it.

Today, I’m going to be going over what causes this issue and how to fix it yourself without contacting Epson’s support or buying a replacement.

What Causes The Issue?

The reason your Epson printer’s ink light may be on or flashing is simple. Every time it does a self-cleaning, Epson wastes a little bit of ink. This waste ink gets dumped into something called a waste ink pad.

Every Epson printer comes with a built-in counter. This counter is called the waste-ink counter. Its job is to keep track of how many times you’ve run your printer’s self-cleaning routine. When the tracker’s count reaches the maximum number, the printer stops working and encourages you to contact Epson’s support team.

To solve this problem yourself, rather than dealing with a support team who’s going to keep trying to get you to spend more money, there are going to be two main steps.

The first step is resetting the printer’s waste ink counter back to zero. The second step is going to be either cleaning out the waste ink pad you have or installing a permanent waste ink collection tank externally.

Step One: Resetting The Waste Ink Counter Back to Zero

Before you do anything else, plug your printer into your computer using a USB cable. A wireless connection may be fine for other things, but there’s no way to successfully complete this process we’re doing today without a wired connection.

Once your printer is plugged in, go to InkChip.net on your computer. There are a number of alternative sites you could use, but most of this software is going to require you to turn off your computer’s antivirus software to download. Because of this, you have to be very careful and make sure their software is legitimate and they aren’t just trying to scam you.

It’s a good idea to use a software that you know you can trust, but if this is your first time resetting your printer’s waste ink counter you may have trouble finding one. The main reason I recommend InkChip.net is that I’ve used it quite a lot and I’ve never had any issues with it, so I’m confident that it’s not a virus in disguise.

Once you get to InkChip.net, you’ll find that the website is fairly easy to navigate and pretty intuitive. The software interface is fairly intuitive, too, and resetting the waste ink counter is very easy.

For the software to do its job, you’re going to have to spend a little money purchasing one of their key codes. Before you do that, though, it’s best to test it out and make sure your printer and computer are compatible with the software.

To test the software, download it by clicking on the language of your choice from the options provided. If you use a Mac computer then I’m sorry but this software will not work for you.

After it’s downloaded, double click to install it. If you have a problem downloading or using the software at any point, you can look at InkChip’s forum page to see if anyone knows the issue and/or how to fix it. If you don’t find your answers there, you can click on “contact” and get a support ticket.

The most common problem is that your antivirus program hasn’t been disabled properly ahead of time and it flagged the software. When this happens and you go to run the software, the antivirus has already deleted it, so there’s nothing to run.

To alleviate this problem, you must first locate the antivirus program on your computer. The solution is going to be extremely similar for almost all antivirus programs. Open the antivirus and go to “Virus & Threat Protection” then click on “History”. You’ll see a list of things saying “Threat Blocked”.

Click on the drop down menu labeled “Action” then click “restore” or “allow” depending on your program. That should tell it to put the software back.

Open the program and click “waste ink counters”. Pick your printer from the drop-down menu, then go to “read waste ink counters”. If you’ve been successful this far then go ahead and purchase the key and copy-paste it into the box that pops up when you click “reset counters”.

Step Two: Installing the External Waste Ink Tank

Now we’re going to install an external waste ink collection tank. Remove the cover on the back side of the printer as well as the second screw underneath. Slide out the waste ink pad. If you don’t want to install an external waste ink collection tank, you can resume this pad a few times after washing and drying it before you’ll need to buy a new one. Keep in mind that it’ll get a little less absorbent every time, though.

Go to BCHTechnologies.com>Accessories>Waste Tank. From here you can either order the external waste ink collection tank kit or buy the individual parts if you already have some at home. You’ll need a tube, connector, bottle, and some velcro.

There will be two more screws at the front of the printer that you need to remove to lift the scanner. Do so gently because if you lift it too high you’ll wind up pulling the cables off of the motherboard.

To the right, you’ll see the printer’s cleaning pump. From there, the waste ink travels to the waste ink pad. Pull out the waste tube and insert one side of the connector into the end of it. Put the other side of the connector into the other tube, and run the other side of that tube through the hole in the lid of the bottle. Lastly, use the velcro to secure the bottle to the side of the printer so you don’t accidentally knock it over and get ink everywhere.