Parts inside your printer are at the end of their service life
Today I had the joy of fixing an Epson Stylus C46 UX printer.
It had the following error: “Parts inside your printer are at the end of their service life. See your printer documentation.”
After a little searching I discovered that most people were saying that “It is simply not worth repairing”, however, I took that as a challange, and decided that if I was going to throw it away anyway I might as well try to fix it first.
Before long I located a page on fixyourownprinter.com‘s forum, which had plenty of details about similar issues.
This is the process I used after reading details on that page:
- Unplug the power and USB cables from the printer.
- Prepare your work area by putting scrap paper down. Have some spare, just incase. You may also require tissue paper. It is also recommended you use protective gloves as the ink will stain your skin for quite some time.
- Unscrew the screw at the back of the printer.
- There are two or three tabs at the back and two at the front. Gently push them in, and then using a bit of force pry apart the cover.
- At the back of the unit you need to locate some white pads, or sponge type things, initially they will seem fine, but they will infact be full of ink. You need to grab a pair of pliers and pull them out one by one, there should be four, put them on your scrap paper.
- Take the scrap paper with the pads on to your sink, turn on the hot tap and hold each one under the tap using the pliers until the water runs clear. If you have protective gloves on it may be worth squeezing the water out also.
- It is recommended that once you have done this, you let them dry.
- Now return the pads back into the printer.
- Put the printer back together, (mind out for the paper alignment, and give it some force), not forgetting the screw at the back.
- Plug in the USB and power cable and turned it ON. (Yes the lights will still flash)
- Download and install the SSC Service Utility for Epson Stylus Printers.
- Select your printer and model number (There is no Stylus C42 UX, so select Stylus C4x), then close the window.
- If it asks if you replaced with the pads; say “YES”. Then close the window.
- You will see a SSC Service Utilitiy icon (it looks like a printer) in the system tray (next to your click), and LEFT click.
- A menu will appear, from here you can click on “Protection counter” (its a red cross), then “reset protection counter”.
- Turn the printer power OFF, wait 10 seconds and then turn it back ON.
Done!
Additional troubleshooting…
If you have problems with paper feed, take it apart again, check everything is in place correctly, push things together tightly, and put it together again.
If you have trouble with print quality, open the lid, clean any ink residue, use the SSC Service Utilitiy to clean the heads.
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Parts inside your printer are at the end of their service life ….
You just saved me a few bucks !!!!!!
This simply works !
Thank you.
I hope my site, http://www.avielsegal.com, especially DAW Optimization page , will do some good for you too..
Does the printer detect the over saturated pads?, If so How?
or does it calculate it from printer use? If the latter, can one get a useful extension of life simply by running the Service Utility program?
Good question.
From my understanding the printer has an internal counter, which starts at 0.
Each time you print (or such) it adds to the counter.
The printer (and software) has a hardcoded limit which when the counter has reached a certain amount it prevents you from using the printer.
At this point you must do two things, firstly clean the pads, and secondly reset the counter, as per instructions above.
Since the manufacturer probably errs on the side of caution, or my cynicism makes me thing the sponge fill is a red herring, why not try going from the second step and resetting the counter to 0.
Hi, with regard to printer sponges, I have a Canon Smartbase MP360S combined printer/scanner/copier which I bought in 2004 and which is now out of warrenty. It stopped working altogether and I started receiving a message on the LCD display which I found out meant the ink sponges were full and to contact the manufacturers. I rang Canon and was told the call out charge would be £89 to which I replied that I only paid £90 for the printer when it was new. I was told that on top of the call out fee, the replacement ink sponges, (of which it would need three), would cost between £6 and £7 each to replace. I said that I didn’t think in these days of trying to be environmentally friendly and recycle, that it was very responsible of the company to make repair costs so prohibitively expensive that people would be more inclined to throw away a perfectly good printer/scanner/copier and buy a new one. The person I was speaking to just said that this was what the company had to charge. I asked for the part numbers for the sponges with a view to buying them and getting someone locally to repair the machine. Howver, I’ve not been able to find any websites that have these ink sponges for me to buy, I’ve tried contacting Canon via e-mail to ask about buying the replacement ink sponges from them as I can’t find them on their website but as yet, a week later have not had a reply from them.
Peter, if you do that, the container that has the sponges in will overflow and you will end up with ink everywhere.
Zita, just open up the printer, take out the current sponges, clean them up, and put them back in.
HM2K, Got here from a PCPro article which mentioned this problem also existed with Canon printers. I bought two MP500 combo units, one for my dad and one for myself. I don’t use mine very much, but I know my dad uses his more often. Is there an SSC utility aimed at Canon printers, so that I can clean the sponges for him as and when necessary? Or is it the case, as with Zita above, that you only have to clean the sponges and the printer detects what appears to it to be new clean sponges and resets itself to carry on as normal?
When this happens, you need to clean the sponges. It won’t detect the new/clean sponges, its impossible. You will still need to reset the counter.
Apparently you can reset the counter by resetting the printer, consult the manual for the steps.
Or try here: http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/inkjet/15284
Thankyou SO much for this info – you are a life saver!
I’ve got a research project to hand in tomorrow & when I attempted to start printing it out this morning, I got the message about parts needing replacing (grrr!) Followed your instructions & it worked (& I’m a woman ha ha ha!)
Thanks again!
xx
hi there. been reading your useful help pages, i am not a computer buff when i go to the site to down load the ssc service utility i get a message saying that it is blocked can u help. george
wicked advice. And to think I threw out a mulit function printer last year cause it was too expensive to fix . Same problem just happened with my new printer and fixed now thanks to you.
Kind Rigards,
Jo.
hm2k – Thanks for your help. If it hadn’t been for you I would have spent at least £80 that I can’t really afford to spend on a new printer. It’s thanks to people like you that people like me can afford to spend time learning what the big companies don’t want us to learn. Thanks again!
My question, Has my Photo R220 Epson printer gone beyond any help?
I had just finished printing a C.D as it did O.K no problem . Then I wanted a back and front printing
I pressed the start to print button and it made a loud gear grinding noise, I then swithed the printer off
at the power plug, switched the R220 back on and it had the two red lights flashing and requested
that I removed the paper that was jammed in the printer. there was no paper in the printer at that time
Do I Have To Take My R220 To The Recycle Tip?
Many Thanks Peter W
In reply to Peter W , I had a similar problem with my Epson Stylus Photo R220 so I took it apart and found that the paper drive roller had popped out of it’s socket at one end.I thought it had snapped off but it just had to be bent to shorten it so it would pop back into its socket again.What caused it was putting too many sheets of paper into the back feed compartment.Because of the amount of sheets,about five was fed in and this action forced the drive roller out of ist socket.I hope this is of some help.
Ron C
Magic!
Like Peter Munro, I couldn’t be bothered to clean the sponges, so I’m expecting to see overflow ink everywhere. When that happens, I’ll break out the scrap paper and rubber gloves. That SSC program is a great utility, though!
Chris
when i ON epson stylus photo r310 all lights blinking please give me a solution
hi,
thanks for that.
on looking at the sponges on my epsom photo 900 they looked ok until i realised there was more than one and the bottom ones were saturated.
when they have dried and if i have any probs with the counter i will be back asking for help.
cheers, john.
hi, me again,
no probs, reset counter
everything back to normal.
many thanks, john
Hi there,
Tried this myself but without success – apparently because I’m on a mac…
anyone come across (or invented) an apple version of SSC software?
I’d REALLY appreciate it.
Many Thanks
Oliver
Thank you very much for your detailed report on changing ink pads and tha excellent program SSC SERVICE UTILITY.
I was just about to throw my printer C44UX in the bin and buy another !
Stumbled across your web page and WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everything works again thanks to your advice, cheers :0)
hi 2 things downloaded the ssc program but cannot get it to work (my printer is c44ux)
secondly any ideas what is causing my canon bjc80 to make grindiong noise when trying to set up ??/
hi again
thanks u lot this thicko has done it and it is working fine; i was trying to reset wrong thingy until i actually clicked on icon in tray and found the different reseter for the ‘end of life’.
now all i need do is sort out my bjc80/70
and then try to unblock the black inkjets on the epson 640 colour
to oliver
being a lateral thinking thicko type
can you not take your printer and conect it to a friends who is running windows ???
that way the software will work 🙂
Hi
My Printer is Epson Stylus Photo R230 Series. the Messege is given that “Parts inside your printer are at the end of their service life. See your printer documentation.” And the printer is not Ready and the two red lights are blinking Please Give me The Solution of this Problem or Send me a Software to Solve the Problems Thanks
Thanks for this. It works!
Thank you very much!!!! you r a super starrr
I don’t know whether you are even reading these comments any more, but incase you are, I am most impressed with your instructions, and with myself for getting it right. As everyone says, you have saved us mega-bucks. Can’t think what Epson hope to achieve by causing all this stress when it can all be solved so simply at home.
Thanks again for your help.
Annie
I do read the comments, thanks, glad this has helped you.
I was beginning to get frustrated with trying to get to the bottom of the problem of `parts inside your printer etc etc’, and then by doing a general web search, I was fortunate enough to find your information, which has proved to be very useful. I am now up and running again.
Thanks for the tip, it works!
You do need the gloves though. Although the pads look clean at first, there not!
Hi, I have an epson stylus r340, the above procedure worked but I have to keep repeating it over and over again turning printer on and off to make it work. Anything else I overlooked.
Thx,
Bill
Hi,
I have an Epson c46 Ive taken the pads out & clean them, but cant find a c46 in the ssc program anyone got any ideas? they’d be very much appreciated.
Cheers
Tam.
Hi I have a Epson RX425 with the same problem, I looked at the pads at the back and cleaned them but the error lights still come on any ideas ?
Thanks
Hi, Many thanks.
I started to print and that error came up.
I found using a large pen / highlighter useful for squeezing the ink out of the pads instead of a pair of pliers, but I did have to put the gloves on.
The pads are drying out now so hopefully tomorrow I’ll get it working again.
Many thanks, Max.
Hi, The pads dried out and the resetter worked + I’m printing again, Excellent page.
Many thanks. Max with a Epson Stylus C46
I did the cleaning of the pads, and followed all the instructions, however when putting it all back together and plugging it back in, the lights are still flashing. When I click “Show Current Value” it says “Some Error Occured” Can this be solved? Urgently need my printer!
Hi, Thanks for the info
I did what you said and i could not believe how easy it was to do and to think my local computer dealer wanted £30.00 to do this for me
Hiya, Interesting thread and plenty of info but can I add a quick question please….
We’ve recently changed the cartridge on our C46 (Cartridge is not an Epson one but a compatible from Tesco). It takes the cradle over to the right hand side of the printer then it sits there sounding like its grinding the gears (the yellow track seems to continue to rotate slowly) and the only way to reset is to take off the power. he red light flashes but no messages re expired etc
Just above the cradle there also appears to be a rocker type “switch “which when pressed stops this grinding but when you try the power again it does the same thing ??
Any ideas or is this related to the “pad full”/Expired parts issue or is somthing broke???
Hi
Followed all the instructions to the letter, apart from wearing gloves, big mistake!
Have it all back together and have used the SSC Service Utility and now receiving an error message “Printer off or some other problem!”. My printer an Epson C46an isn’t off but both green and red lights are flashing (new ink was put in just before it gave up the ghost).
Any help would be appreciated but thanks in the meantime.
Rachel
My printer has a mind of it,s own , but perhaps I can sort it now.
Hi
Just like to say I have an Epson stylus C46 with this fault and was considering scrapping it until I found your page. Followed instructions and it now works like new again. Thanks a lot you saved me a lot of heartache.
Hi,
A friend turned me onto your site, and I now have a problem I need some help with , which hopefully someone can tell me
how to handle. I purchased a refurbished (at the factory) Epson
Stylus CX1500 about a year ago, which a few months ago stop-ped feeding the paper. I am wondering if the procedure ment-ioned above, that indicates how to clear a paper jam, followed by the SCS Service Utility download, will probably work? I am positive I don’t a paper jam, but another posting stated his bar had slipped out of place, which I am thinking may be the culprit here. Any help would be quite welcome and appreciated. Thanks.
Arlene M. Brisart-Gordon
02/28/08
Tried it and it works. Was about to buy a new printer, no need now. Thanks for the link.
Hi
I followed all the instructions: cleaned and dried the pads, put them back, downloaded the software, reset the counters but still no joy. Lights still flashing. Have now tried turning the printer on and off, resetting again (and saying yes to replacing the pads) but still nothing. This has worked for so many here – why not me???
Please help!
Thanks for the instructions…It help me fixed my printer..you’re great!.
Wow! Worked like a charm! My 12 year old son thinks his Dad is a genius because he was able to fix the printer in time for him to complete his school project!
Thanks a million!
I initially rang EPSON re this problem and the mongrels said it couldn’t be fixed by yourself, and that I would have to take my C41UX to a service centre and pay 40 bucks. I feel like calling them back and referring them to this thread. Even the bloke at the service centre said it couldn’t be done by yourself! A minute after hanging up I googled my problem and found the solution – awesome!!!
Wow, amazing solution! I have the same problem with my Epson R230. Now everything working just fine! Thanks.
eeeeeej i got a epson C66……………………..and it worked
greeeeeeets thx Hans (dutch)
i have been taking my epsom c46 to a repair centre and being charged £15 each time to solve this problem, i can`t believe this really works. thank you so much, i just had to thank you . kerry