Epson printers are supplied with cartridges that are marked as Setup cartridges. So what does that mean exactly?
The cartridges are the same as Epson standard cartridges in all respects. This includes the weight of the cartridges and therefore the same volume of ink as a standard cartridge. The difference is that the chips are designed to only work with a new unused printer.
When any ink cartridges are installed in an Epson printer, the printer’s firmware communicates with the chips on the cartridges. In the case of setup cartridges, information on the chips allows printers to recognise that the chips are set-up version chips that can only register and work in new out-of-the-box printers.
If the setup cartridges are installed into a printer that has previously had cartridges installed, and that has been used for printing, the printer will return a warning message that the cartridges cannot be recognised. This means that they can not be used in the printer.
Epson has done this to overcome what was a common practice of companies removing the manufacturer’s original cartridges from a printer box and replacing these with after-market compatible cartridges. Compatible cartridges cost 20% of the price of the manufacturer’s original cartridges, therefore it was a very lucrative practice for printer suppliers to switch cartridges and sell on the manufacturer’s original cartridges for big profits.
Re-chipping is a method that allows a setup cartridge to be used as a standard capacity cartridge. The cartridge is a genuine manufacturer’s original cartridge with a compatible chip. The ink inside the cartridge is as supplied by the printer manufacturer.
The benefit to customers is that they get to purchase a set of manufacturer-original cartridges at a vastly reduced price. Around 50% of the price of a set of standard capacity ink cartridges.
All that we do is remove the Epson chip from the cartridges and replace it with a compatible chip. The video shows how we do this.