Which Cartridge Do I Change?

A useful tip this, obvious if you know it, a puzzle if you do not. A customer came in this morning to buy some compatible printer cartridges for her Epson Printer. The lady has spent most of her life in office type environments using all manner of printers and copiers, so I naturally assumed that she knew how to change the ink cartridges in her printer. The danger of assumption!

The lady had changed one inkjet cartridge and still the printer would not print, it still had the red light flashing to say it needed a new ink cartridge fitting. This is where my assumption theory went right out of the window. The lady asked me "I have changed the black ink cartridge, so how do I know which colour cartridge to change?"

The answer is this; on all Epson inkjet printers if you lift up the cover to uncover the ink cartridges you will see at some point a plastic arrow shaped moulding which sticks out about 5/10mm from the casing of the printer. With the lid up on your printer press the flashing red light button (the one that tells you it needs a cartridge changing), and the cartridge carrier will move to the opposite side of the machine.

The cartridge carrier is the bit of the printer that has all the ink cartridges in it. The carrier will stop with the cartridge that needs changing opposite the plastic arrow shaped moulding. The arrow will point at the empty inkjet cartridge, once the carrier has stopped press the red light button again and it will move the carrier to a position where you can remove the empty inkjet cartridge and fit a full replacement.

So that is it! How to tell which cartridge needs changing if you have to change more than one at the same time. It sounds a bit like my luck some times to have several cartridges run out at once.