# Epson stylus S20 ink problem



## he hate me (Dec 7, 2008)

I just bought an Epson Stylus S20 inkjet printer. It came with a set of ink cartridges, the instructions did say that the first set of cartridges would not last as long as normal because the printer had to charge the print heads. However, once those cartridges ran out the second set only lasted maybe 10-12 sheets printing in DRAFT mode. Now the ink monitor is saying the black ink is low, and the printer won't print unless all the cartridges have ink. I bought this printer in an attempt to save money on ink, I also own a LexMark X1190 all-in-one, they are notorious for having expensive ink hence the switch. Any suggestions I’m tearing out my hair here.


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## Louise222 (Mar 31, 2009)

I too am having this problem with my printer. I have replaced all of my ink cartridges having had the printer only 2 months. Now it is saying my black ink has run out after literally having printed 10 pages since the last change! Did you get an answer from anyone on this? I'm no longer in the UK which makes the whole thing even more frustrating...


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## inkinawink (Dec 17, 2008)

The cartridges for that particular Model, have only 6.5ml of ink inside, that isn't much at all. Epson printers are notorious ink hogs, so yeah, you won't get much out of those.


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## pn2204-01 (Jul 10, 2009)

I too have been caught out by this model. 

It's my own fault, before I bought my printer (& I bought it because of the Epson name), I should have searched the internet and found all the hundreds (if not thousands) of other buyers who also found out, after acquiring this model, just how ink thirsty it was - let alone slow & noisy !!!

I've only had mine for 2 months and have used 3 sets of inks, all genuine Epson and have barely printed 10 sheets A4 size (all black text only) & some 7 sheets of colour prints, again A4 size.

I now regret giving away my old but still working Lexmark Z42 on Freecycle!!!

Just a correction to the ink levels on Epson cartridges for the S20; 

The basic TO891 thru TO894 (Epson Monkey Range) have the following ink fill: TO891 (Black)= 5.8ml & TO892, 3, 4 (Cyan, Magenta,Yellow)= 3.5ml each.

TO711 thru TO714 (Epson Cheetah Range) have TO711 (Blk)= 7.4ml & TO712, 3, 4 (Cy, Mag, Yel)= 5.5ml each.

There is an additional size available just for the Black ink, which is a TO711(H) (Epson Giraffe Range) which is 11.1ml and usually supplied in a twin pack for about £18.00 GBP here in the UK.

Obviously, this has to be the reason why the S20 is being sold at rock bottom prices here in the UK. 

Typically £25 GBP, including Free Ink, Free USB Lead & even Free Shipping!....... No Wonder!!!

I swear, this experience will stop me ever buying an Epson product again.

I'm even thinking of going back to using Squid Ink, a Quill Pen & Parchment!


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## pn2204-01 (Jul 10, 2009)

....just to add & to make matters worse, my ink level display is stuck & always shows full for all inks, so I never know when an ink runs out....until it runs out! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!


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## westmoors (Oct 11, 2009)

I have recently bought an Epson S20 and like so many others have run into ink problems, in my case the printer would only print either the top half or the bottom half of the text and then miss a few lines, the print test showed the other colours were OK, repeated head cleaning did nothing to clear the black except to empty a set of cartridges as this printer does not have selective colour head cleaning . Trawling the net turned up lots of solutions with one from a ink firm that recommended flushing the offending nozzle/s with a syringe and a plastic tube.
Their recommendation for Epson was to put some paper towelling under the printhead and by releasing an internal catch move the printhead to the central position to catch the flushed ink in the paper. Don’t move the printhead, on start up I could not get the printhead back to it’s normal position, I finally had to get an on line chat with a technician to sort it out.

But the idea was sound, if you have a persistent nozzle clog and to save on using copious amounts of ink on head cleaning you can flush one or all the ink inlet tubes in the base of the printer this way, but keep the printhead in the ‘change nozzle position’ and you can just get enough paper underneath where it is, if necessary pull out the power lead when in this position before starting to work on it. 

However before even this method try one I did. Remove the offending cartridge, turn it upside down and with a syringe put some ink flusher into the ink outlet hole through it’s rubber grommet. Replace the cartridge in the printer and leave in situ for as long as you can. On start up the printer will think it has new cartridges and carry out a charging/headcleaning operation and flush the nozzle with the fluid you put in the outlet, this cured the problem for me. There are also firms that supply flushing cartridges already filled but with this printer you would have to flush them all each time if you use this method.

Ink costs can be high if you print a lot and with the S20 O E cartridges at around £10 each it can be quite expensive, but there are compatibles on the market offering 4 sets of 4 for under £20 on special offer, even singles at £2.41 each and of course you can refill your own, but this is not for the faint hearted and I cannot guarantee you will be successful , it can be a messy business but is even cheaper than compatibles if you get it right. 

Apologies for being a bit long winded, but here is some of the detail that I have gathered while filling the cartridges myself.

The cartridges have two compartments, a sponge in one half with a blanked off filler hole over it , and an empty chamber for liquid ( opposite end to the contacts ). First clean off around the outlet hole underneath and cover with some sealotape to stop any leakage while filling, on top of the cartridge under the label is a breather hole at the contacts end this is fed by a snake like air channel under the label which passes around the blanked off filler hole near to the centre of the cartridge before ending near the other end, you can pierce the blanked off filler hole easily with a fine twist drill and with a syringe fill the sponge with ink, however the empty chamber will take some time to fill by seepage from the sponge, filling very slowly will help, and you can only judge the content by it’s weight unless you happen to overfill.

The adventurous may speed up matters by piercing the top of this empty chamber and filling it directly, but both filling holes must be fully sealed off after filling otherwise the ink will drain out of the outlet so a bit of practice is needed, a tiny piece of paper and a blob of contact adhesive over the hole will suffice, but beware of fouling the air channel, if this happens you will still get the indication of a clog up when you use the cartridge, but a very fine sewing needle through the top of the label into the breather hole should cure this. 
The cartridge chip has also to be reset with a 9 pin chip resetter which is now available on the market.

Wear some vinyl type gloves and work in some place where spillage is not a worry such as the garden shed, any ink spilt is almost impossible to clean off so on balance it’s probably not worth all the effort! westmoors


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## AshleyLewis (Nov 10, 2009)

I found the review on this epson s 20 and they said that it will print approx 180 pages.So i think u need to change your printer.


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## inkinawink (Dec 17, 2008)

Yes, 180 at 5% coverage, key number here is 5%......if you print full pages of text, or graphics.....lol.......do the math. The proper way to buy an inkjet printer these days is ....... by checking the page yield of the print cartridges, the ink volume, then the make of the printer (stay away from Lexmark and Dell they are the worst made printers and cartridges) alot of people are heading to the Brother all in ones now.


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## he hate me (Dec 7, 2008)

Thanks to all that posted their replies. As I wrote in my last post I bought my printer upon the old Epson reputation. The first Epson printer I bought was mid-range priced (in the US) and printed flawlessly (it was a bit noisy but I didn’t mind as long as it worked, it wasn’t like it sounded like a jet taking off or something). The ink level indicator application was very accurate and warned me in plenty of time before I ran out of ink. On top of this the ink cartridges were pretty inexpensive.
When I was in the market for another printer I should have did my homework and looked into the reviews for this printer before I bought it. Now this thing is a big dust collector sitting on my desk. When it printed it printed well, however it was like someone said it’s an ink hog. I didn’t have any clogging issues because I stopped using it when I found that I had to change all the cartredges when only 1 went empty. 
I’ll look into the TO711 (H) ink range for black and see where that takes me. Does anyone know how to get around having to change all the ink cartridges when only 1 goes empty?
Thanks for the help people.


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## westmoors (Oct 11, 2009)

Hi he hate me, you can change individual cartridges and you should get individual warnings of the low ink state as each one happens. Right click on your desktop printer icon if you have one but however you make it get to 'Printing preferences', click the Maintenance tab ( this shows ink levels ) and then on the Ink Cartridge replacement box and follow the instructions. You can also do this to replace any cartridge before it is very low using this route. Also have you got the ink levels status showing when printing ? this will always give you a clue as to what is happening. westmoors


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## DavidPritchard (Feb 3, 2010)

It seems to be a common problem with the Epson S20/S21 printers. I bought an Epson S20 last July mainly because it was cheap but also because Epson compatible cartridges can be bought cheaply from several websites. I have had similar problems with ink, having printed only a few sheets of A4. The fault I am having is that it is not recognising one of the cartridges as being a genuine Epson cartridge. But since the cartridges were true Epson ones supplied with the printer I cannot understand why this is happening. I am now on my third printer having exchanged the first 2. The current one is an S21 but the same problem is occurring - prints a few sheets Ok then develops the same fault. Very frustrating. I have written to Epson and am awaiting their response but I think I would prefer to obtain a refund from Epson and buy another make! Any further advice?


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## westmoors (Oct 11, 2009)

Since october I had been running trouble free for some months when out of the blue the darned thing refused to recognise one cartridge, I wouldn't have minded but I had been using the installed set of compatible cartridges for quite a few printings before this happened. The software seems to be erratic because I could see no pattern to this fault. Also the printer head started to return to the extreme left hand side of the printer and it took ages of using the re-set button to get it back to it's normal position. I re-set the unrecognised cartridgewith a 7 pin chip re-setter and got things going again but a further hiccup forced me to replace the whole set of compatible cartridges, since then no problems except that the ink monitor for the black shows continuously full and I rarely use colour so it would suggest that the whole ink monitoring system has a built in fault which I doubt Epson would admit to. westmoors.


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## westmoors (Oct 11, 2009)

One further point of interest which I only found out by accident. If you lift the lid and look at the top edge of the large square hole in the printer body you will see a pointer sticking out, it would appear that if you have an empty cartridge the printer will bring the printhead to this position with the empty cartridge oposite the pointer to show you which cartridge needs changing. How you get this to happen I do not know, I could find no mention of this in any manual, I came to this by constantly pressing the re-set button when I could not get anything to work, so if anyone has any information on this I would be very interested westmoors.


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## westmoors (Oct 11, 2009)

Have you ever received the message 'some parts are at the end of their service life' ? It usually refers to the internal counter telling you the waste ink pads are full, or at least they should be by now. and the printer has shut down. No ammount of fiddling with holding down buttons and powering on and off will work.
There is an Epson re setter called I believe SCC or similular initials but this only covers printers up to a few years ago the S20 and many others is not included so for me it means a long trip to a service center and a cost of travel or carriage charges plus £15 service (last yrs price ) 

But help is on hand ,look up W.I.C.Adjustment Program in google it will steer you to the W.I.C web page and they the more recent Epson printers and others, the S20 is a new addition with some T models. there is a free check on your waste ink condition first.

A couple of downloads and the printer was re set. price 20 dollars US (about £12.50.) . Of course it does not drain / clean out the waste ink pads so you must be aware of this danger and be prepared to do this your self to avoid spillage at a later date. Westmoors


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## westmoors (Oct 11, 2009)

*Re: Epson stylus S20 ink problem further information*

Please add this to my earlier post, I have also included the experiem=nces I have had with refilling cartridges for the SD20 as well.

( on re setting the counter )
There is an option offered by Epson which I only found after using the W.I.C site.
I do not know if there is a charge but details are on the following web page http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/InkPadsForm.jsp

They also recommend not changing the waste pads yourself ( no models specified ) but do offer a re set facility but suggest that the pads must be changed or cleaned and you should use a service centre or buy a new printer .

However either way you re set the counter you are faced with ink pads that need attention, on earlier models such as C40 & 44 the ink pads were accessible, they could be removed cleaned and replaced but after finding the hidden clips on the S20 cover and looking inside it is obvious that the normal DIY enthusiast cannot get at them without a major stripping of the machine, so I have no idea what a service centre would do.
My solution was to pull the waste ink tube out of it’s location and feed it through a hole I drilled in the back of cover, I then packed a small plastic lidded box with sponge and fed the waste pipe into the box making sure all things were secure, now all I have to remember is to check the state of the box occasionally, but there is also a commercial extra waste tank on the market if you don’t want total D.I.Y


Ink cartridges can be costly at OE prices, I fill my own at least up to three times before discarding them for a new set of compatibles, problems do occur when filling the odd cartridge but with you controlling the operation it is easy to remedy rejections by the printer, but I always put in a new compatible set every 3rd or 4th 
The filling is simple but slow and you may not consider this cost effective compared to a compatible cartridge but for records sake it is as follows. First reverse the cartridge and dry the outlet, place sufficient contact adhesive over the rubber grommet of the outlet to stop leakages, ( it removes very easy when required ) when dry secure the cartridge the correct way up in order to drill a fine hole in the top. The cartridge is divided in half internally into two compartments, the one over the ink outlet is sponge filled the other is one hollow.
Drill a very fine hole through the top of the empty compartment using a syringe and a very thin filler tube, slowly fill with about 15mls of ink, the compartments are inter connected but give plenty of time to fill the sponge side.

When filling is completed block the drilled hole with a small amount of tissue and seal over with contact adhesive and allow to dry completely, stand the cartridge on a sheet of paper for at least 24hrs, a small amount of ink seepage from the main outlet is permissible ,if a lot of ink seeps from the main outlet your sealing of the filling hole could be faulty.

All this should be done in a safe area, such as the garden shed, and wear gloves, the ink takes ages to remove from your fingers, and never if spilt on a carpet !

Before fitting into the printer, re set the cartridge with a chip re setter and simply remove the outlet seal’s adhesive layer.

Yes it can be a pain but taking the waste ink re set and the cartridge filling together it may even save you buying a replacement printer when in trouble, and you can have some very low costs when printing. westmoors


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