ssc! you are all probably no doubt aware I own a company that distributes low cost compatible inkjet cartridges across the UK. From the range of cartridges that are stocked I find that the ones designed for Epson printers tend to produce excellent results at a good price with a very low return rate. One thing that time and again catches customers out is when they install a new inkjet cartridge into a machine which has dried up printheads and as a result the new cartridge fails to work satisfactory.
This problem is caused due to the fact that unlike machines designed by HP or Lexmark, Epson printers have the printhead integrated into the machine itself rather than present inside the cartridge. This means that in an Epson printer you just buy ink tanks and the printer then has to take care of distributing the ink onto the paper whereas in contrast a HP or Lexmark printer will have the printing technology present in the cartridge itself and so the cartridge takes care of distributing the ink across the page when you print. Bottom like is that with a HP or Lexmark cartridge that you will be getting a new print head every time you change the cartridge which although may sound good in theory results in your printing costs soaring.
The good news with Epson printheads is that if they do become clogged that you can easily clean them through the use of a function built into the printer that can be accessed via the printer control panel or through software on your PC. Whilst effective this utility is somewhat limited so today I´m going to take the time to let you know about a free piece of software which is a must for Epson printer users.
The SSC Service utility includes several tools that Epson printer users will find useful. First and foremost is the ability to clean individual colours of the printhead; let´s say for example that your yellow isn´t working properly because the printhead nozzle is blocked - Now conventionally you would have to run the head cleaning process on all your available colours and since this process uses ink it would result in a fairly large wastage. With the SSC Service Utility you could just clean the yellow section of the printhead which would result in less wastage. This facility is made even more useful by the fact that you also have the ability to perform thorough head cleans rather than just the conventional standard clean.
Although I wouldn´t really recommend refilling your Epson print cartridges (why bother when I sell brand new cartridges starting from £1.49) this utility does also offer a few utilities relating to managing the smart chip on the front of the cartridge which tried to prevent refilling. There are also a few utilities relating to the internal counters inside the printer which will be helpful for more advanced users who don´t appreciate their printer highlighting the fact that it needs to be serviced on a regular basis.
To conclude, the SSC utility is a free of charge program that extremely compact and hence uses very few system resources and will take very little time to download. Most Epson printer owners will find a use for it at some point in the life of their printer so it is certainly worth taking the time to download it now.
Computer Articles 2007
