Simple Epson Printer Maintenance on Linux

One thing that I could never get my head around when I first moved over to linux was the lack of support for cleaning printheads etc on epson printers. In the end as I was short on time, I simply learnt the manual buttons to press on the printer to do what I needed. However, today as I am reviewing some academic papers I found it would be easier to print them, and the nozzles were messed up again, so I thought I would have one last go at it. Eventually I found the wonderful tool that is escputil

escputil will be in the repoistories for your distribution and so it should be easily installable through your package manager. It doesn’t have a nice shiny interface though, you will have to prepared to get your hands dirty at the command line, but don’t fear, its 3 easy commands.

escputil -r /dev/usblp0 -s

escputil -r /dev/usblp0 -n

escputil -r/dev/usblp0 -c

The commands will do the following; -s will report back the ink levels in your cartridges, -n will print a nozzle check sheet and -c will initiate a clean.

The section -r/dev/usblp0 (thats a zero by the way) will tell the program where to find your printer, this just tells it that it is the first usb line printer that is attached, and will be applicable for 99% of you!

So there we have it, you can now maintain your epson printer using the command line, I’ve tried and tested it and I have to say it works perfectly!