Refilling an EcoTank, step by step
Refilling takes five minutes and little can go wrong, apart from two things: the wrong colour in the wrong tank, and forgetting to reset the ink level. This is the order that works.
2 min
Do not wait until the tank is empty
An EcoTank stops printing the moment a tank drops below its lower line, in the middle of whatever you were printing. On an A3 photograph that costs you the sheet and the ink already on it. Top up as soon as you see a tank heading for the lower line, not when the printer beeps.
Running one dry is also the only thing that genuinely damages an EcoTank: a print head that pulls air has to be flushed afterwards, and that costs more ink than you saved.
The six steps
Switch the printer on and leave it on. Resetting the ink level is only possible from the screen, so turning it off achieves nothing.
- 1 Open the scanner unit with both hands until it clicks, then open the ink tank cover.
- 2 Check which colour belongs in which tank. The order on the machine is BK, PBK, C, Y, M, GY and it is printed beside the filling ports.
- 3 Hold the bottle upright and unscrew the cap slowly. Tilting it with the cap on builds pressure, and that is exactly when it spits.
- 4 Stand the nozzle upright in the filling port. The bottle empties on its own and stops on its own once the tank reaches the upper line. Squeezing is unnecessary and does not help.
- 5 Take the bottle away, screw the cap back on, and close the cover and the scanner unit.
- 6 On the screen go to Settings, then Maintenance, then Reset ink levels, and tick the colours you actually filled.
Why that reset is not optional
An EcoTank has no sensor measuring how much ink is in a tank. It counts the drops it has fired and subtracts them from what it believes was in there. Refill without resetting and that counter stays on nearly empty, so the printer keeps warning you about a tank that is full.
The other way round is worse: reset without refilling and the printer believes it is full, then prints on until the head pulls air. So reset only the colours you actually filled.
Spilled some?
Dye ink, which is everything except pigment black, wipes off the casing with a damp cloth while it is still wet. Pigment black soaks in faster and leaves a grey shadow on white plastic. A drop on your hands comes off with soap and water, it just takes a few washes.
Ink on the scanner glass is the one thing to remove immediately, or you will scan it into everything that follows.