Some Epson printers are programmed to stop working after a certain period of use

Printers remain one of the most frustrating parts of consumer electronics, but turns out the thirst for expensive ink and the occasional paper chew and choke aren’t the biggest challenges of using an Epson printer. As Some users have discoveredthe hardware could be programmed to just stop working one dayif used too often.

The phrase “planned obsolescence” is often used as a practice in consumer electronicsB. When a product is specifically designed and built for a limited lifespan, requiring an upgrade or replacement in just a few years. Most companies refuse to use this approach or give very specific but questionable reasons as to why it is necessary Markus Havenan author and lecturer at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, recently discovered.

Haven recently took to Twitter Sharing a frustrating experience with her wife’s “very expensive @EpsonAmerica printer” which seemingly out of the blue displayed a warning message stating that “it had reached the end of its life.” It then simply stopped working and required either servicing to bring it back from the dead or a full replacement.

So what was the problem with the printer? A dead engine? A defective circuit board? nope The error message was related to porous pads in the printer collecting and holding excess ink. This wear out over time This can lead to potential property damage from spilled ink, or possibly even damage to the printer itself. Usually, Other components in the printer will wear out before these pads, or consumers will upgrade to a better model after a few years, but some high volume users may get this error message while the rest of the printer seems perfectly fine and usable.

According to that fight for repair Substack, the self-bricking problem affects the Epson models L130, L220, L310, L360 and L365, but could also affect other models and dates back at least five years. There is already Videos on YouTube indicates other Epson users manually replace these ink pads to bring their printers back to life. The company offers a Ink Pad Reset Utility for Windows only This extends the life of the printer for a short time, but can only be used once and after that The hardware must either be officially serviced or completely replaced.

A few years ago, Epson launched its EcoTank printer range. specially designed to handle the extremely high cost of replacing ink cartridges for color inkjet printers. The printers had large ink tanks that were easily refilled with cheaper bottles of ink, and while this made Epson’s EcoTank printers more expensive, they would be cheaper to run in the long run, especially for those printing lots of color images. But that assumes they actually keep working long-term. Videos of users manually swapping out the ink pads on their Epson printers seem to indicate that the company could refactor the hardware to make this part easily user-serviceable. which would significantly extend the life of the hardware. But it looks like the company’s solution is in jeopardy Contribution to an ever-growing e-waste problem and forcing consumers to pay for new hardware long before they actually need it.

We reached out to Epson for comment on this functionality and asked the company which models they are specifically talking about affected by this restriction. We also asked if Servicing is covered under the printer’s warranty and what the cost might be if not and we’ll update this story when we get feedback.