Electronic Chip on the Epson 9 Pin Carts
I have had many emails flying around the world for quite a while now about these Epson 9 pin cartridges. I’ve been trying to find out how far away the resetters are and why the resetting is difficult.
Then all of a sudden they just appeared – the 9 pin chip resetters are now miraculously available. To reset back to full, the cartridge must contain at least 20% of the ink – which isn’t very practical for us .Why would the cartridge have to contain 20% of ink you may be asking?
The 9 pin chip is different to the 7 pin chip – the biggest difference is that it has an actual ink sensor that is attached to the chip. The sensor is in the cartridge and ink is in contact with it. A few of us old timers may remember the Epson S020025 cartridge which had a similar system all those years ago.
I’m not exactly sure how the sensor works but it could be measuring the conductivity – when ink is available there will be a conductivity reading when there is no ink zero conductivity or very low reading will be found.
In this system – a very small voltage would be applied between two small probes – if the electricity reaches the other side it is conductive. So in this case a very low voltage would pass through the ink – but when the probes are not touched by ink no electricity will pass from one side to the other.
From my understanding once the sensor doesn’t recognise ink any longer, information on the chip gets changed and at this stage can’t be reset back to full. We’ll keep researching and testing and if a solution is found we will get it you as soon as we can.
But remember we have Procolor cartridges available for these printers that work extremely well. It appears that our Epson TO-731 series can be refilled as the chip resets itself! So it’s not a total lockout for our industry.
I hope this information has been useful for you.
