There are two distinct types of cartridges or more accurately their chips for the 378/478 refillable kits we sell.
ARC (Auto Reset Chip) Type
This is a chip that resets automatically once the chip has reached empty, been removed to refill and then replaced in the printer. It’s not usually possible to use with a chip resetter so you must wait until the cartridge reaches empty before you can expect it to reset.
Potential Issue with ARC & waste ink pad error:
If your printer reaches the “waste ink pads are full” error while one or more of the cartridge chips are indicating that the ink levels are low (regardless of the physical level in the cartridge) you may find that the printer will refuse to recognise one or more of these cartridges after resetting the waste ink counter.
The reason for this issue is that the printer expects to complete a comprehensive priming routine as if it was a new printer and it does not expect the cartridges to be anything other than full (as if you installed the usual setup cartridges with your printer).
Work-around / Fix:
Purchasing a compatible set of cartridges and installing these usually clears the error and allows you to reinstall your refillable cartridges again.
Resettable Chip Type
These are single use chips that do not automatically reset but that can be reset using the external compatible chip resetter that is provided with this version of the kit.
This type of kit allows you to reset the chips whenever you want to so there’s no need to wait for a cartridge to show empty and you can easily avoid the potential issue noted for the ARC kit type indicated in the section above.
You can also reduce the amount of waste ink generated by removing, refilling and resetting each of the cartridges together so that the printer only needs to do a single priming routine rather than every time a single cartridge reaches empty and needs to be refilled (as per the ARC type).
Personally we recommend the resettable chip bundles for this reason but recognise chip resetters can be difficult to line up with the chips and may be difficult to use for anyone who suffers hand tremors or poor vision.
Identifying Your Chip Type
The chips on your cartridge have VERY small print that helps identify the type of chip your cartridge uses.
- Chip with an R suffix is an ARC (Auto Reset chip)
- Chip with an N suffix is a resettable chip (using an external chip resetter)
The suffix may be followed by a numeric digit (eg: 1, 3, etc..) but these are just version numbers