How does a printer know a cartridge was previously used?

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Hi all, how can a printer know when you are trying to use a used cartridge that is empty. Why does it not just re-register the cartridge as full again? There must be memory stored on the printer that has a list of all the serial numbers of the cartridges ever used so as not to accept an old one, or maybe the serial numbers are stored on your PC. I would think there must be a way to reset the printer so that you can reuse so called empty cartridges.

Thanks for reading

 

[bigP]

I saw this in Youtube, it might answer your question.

 

[Bristolian]

Not sure about other makes but Epson printers write to the chip on the cartridge when it thinks it's empty. Whenever a cartridge is replaced the printer simply looks to see if the chip has been flagged as empty.

If you have re-fillable cartridges (as I do) then each time the cartridge is put back into the printer it resets the flag to show full. This can cause problems if you remove the cartridge and put it back without refilling it as the printer thinks it's a new cartridge so you can't rely on the printer telling you when it's empty. Considering the savings in ink (and I do use a lot) this is a minor it=rritation and I have learnt to refill any cartridge I remove before putting it back in the printer.

Hope this is of some help.

Steve

 

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Hi all, thanks for all the info.