Waste Ink Pads

What are waste ink pads? The ink used in cleaning the print heads or priming cartridges has to go somewhere. Epson printers send this waste ink to absorbent pads in the bottom of the printer and tracks how much ink they have absorbed. Once the ink pads are full they must be replaced or else additional waste ink will not be absorbed and will leak from the printer.

Epson says that "Most users will not receive this message before the printer is replaced for other reasons. Some high volume users or those who use the printer for many years may receive this message about ink pads before other components reach the end of their usable life."¹. We are certainly high volume users. Epson recommends replacing the printer when the ink pads are full, since the cost of repair is typically greater than the cost of the printer. They do, however, provide a utility to reset the waste ink counter, in effect clearing the error. You should not simply reset the counter and continue to use the printer -- the waste ink must be handled somehow.

Alternative Repair

Since we were faced with replacing the printers anyway, I decided to try an alternative fix. Re-routing the waste ink lines to an external container would effectively bypass the waste ink pads and allow continued use of the printer. Removing the back panel of the printer and popping off the right side cover revealed the waste ink lines. In this photo you can see where I've re-routed the waste ink lines.

I drilled two holes in the side panel for the new ink lines.

And ran them to an external container.

Running Epson's ink pad counter reset utility cleared the error and the printers have been working fine for two months now. The total cost of the materials was less than $5 to repair two printers.