Epson R260 Photo Printer - about 6 years old and has worked great.

UNCLEJ

Ran out of black toner. Replaced with proper Epson cartridge but the ink light did not go off. Reinserted the cartridge but it did not fix. Ink carriage does it's thing and light stays off until it returns fully to the right and then the light comes back on. I tried a second new Epson cartridge but had same results. Repeated several times with no change. Have I been stupid - I used reloaded cartridges the last time and replaced that black at least twice with no problem. The current attempts when checking instructions for installation of cartridge tell me the cartridge (appropriate Epson one) is not compatible. The color cartridges still installed are from the set of reloaded ones. Does the printer require all cartridges installed at the same time to match the manufacturer and a single one with a different source will screw the whole thing up - that doesn't make sense but then everything in life does not make sense. Does the inking device that moves the ink from the cartridge to the printer head get all gooped up and need to be cleaned? Is that a thing I can do myself? Everything has worked great until now and I don't want replace the entire printer (who would). I assume taking the printer to a repair location in one of the stores is going to cost me at least a couple hundred dollars - slose to the cost of a new printer. Seems too wasteful to an old fart with a "fix it" tradition installed at creation..

Quietman

The problem is the mixed chips. Epson plays some games in theirs to cause this kind of incompatibility. If there was something wrong with your black reloaded cartridge get another one from the same manufacturer.

I've been using cartridges I reload in my R280 since my first ink change over 10 years ago. When one of the cartridges went on the blink, I replaced the entire set with no issues as I could no longer find the seller I'd bought my first set from (was still way cheaper than buying all epson cartidges).

There used to be an Epson reset utility floating around on the ne,t as the printers were programmed to stop working after a specific number of pages. Don't know if it's still available. Not sure if that will help in this case. Making all the cartridges be the same brand is the best option.

Ian

Greetings, we do not offer any repair services at Micro Center for printers. You can try reaching out to Epson but I would almost assume the cost of repairs would probably be the same as buying a new printer.