printer ink

[bjlockie]

My Epson R340 printer may have died.
It won't feed paper.
It also ran out of light cyan ink and one of the symptoms is it *might* not feed paper.
I am hesitant to buy more ink and then find out the printer is dead.
I read about chip resetters which prompts my question.
What would be the consequences of resetting the empty cartridge to make the printer think it is full?

 

[Phynaz]

Ink acts as a coolant for the print heads. Run without ink and you risk cooking your print head.

 

[glugglug]

I have used the resetters, they are great. The epson cartridges have a sensor 3/4 of the way down in the cartridge, so even if you use a resetter, once it gets to that point where the sensor is dry the level of ink the printer thinks you have will jump down accordingly. If you reset it again after this happens the printer will do something to the cartridge chip that makes it no longer usable, to prevent you from really using an empty cartridge and possibly damaging the printer. If you use the resetter on generic cartridges there might not be a sensor and it could let it really run empty.

Note: even if you only reset one cartridge and put it back in, when the printer goes thru the "charging ink" phase it is sucking a large amount of ink from ALL cartridges. Because of this, the resetter basically only cuts your ink cost in half. Which still leaves it pretty damn high. When my Epson died, I got a Kodak. The difference in ink cost is insane. The Kodak ESP9 with genuine Kodak cartridges and not bothering with a resetter or anything has half the cost per photo my Epson FX9400 did with generic cartridges.