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How to Replace an Epson XP-405, XP-305 and XP-102 ink cartridge



Epson have designed their XP-405, XP-305 and XP-102 printers so that changing the ink cartridges is pretty much the same set of steps for each model, so whichever printer you have, you’ll know what to do. 

As a note, all of these instructions are carried out on the printer itself, so you can completely ignore your computer for now.

  1. Press the Home button. That’s the one that has a picture of a house on it.

  2. Press the left or right arrow keys (the ones either side of the OK button on the printer) until the LCD screen says ‘Setup’

  3. Press the OK button. The screen will show the ‘Ink Levels’ option.

  4. Press the right or left arrow keys until the screen says ‘Maintenance’.

  5. Press the OK button.

  6. Press the right or left arrow keys until the screen says ‘Ink Cartridge Replacement’.

  7. Press the OK button. Now you’re ready to get dirty.

  8. Hopefully you don’t actually get dirty, but if you do, you can wash the ink off your skin with soap and water. If the ink gets in your eyes, flush your eyes very, very thoroughly with water. If you get any in your mouth, spit it out and contact your healthcare professional. If it gets on any fabrics, you can try to get it out with a specially formulated ink stain remover, but you might just be out of luck there.

  9. Lift up the scanner. You’ll be able to lift the entire scanner unit up, tilting it up on a hinge, until the ink cartridges are exposed. 

  10. At the back of the colour cartridge you want to replace, you will feel a tab that squeezes in, at the very top of the cartridge.

  11. Squeeze the tab and lift the cartridge straight up and out of the printer.

  12. Be careful at this point to not touch the white ribbon or the print head itself (that’s the bit that the cartridges sit in that moves back and forth). These are delicate and shouldn’t be messed with.

  13. Repeat this on all the cartridges you need to replace.

  14. Grab the new ink cartridge, but don’t take it out of its clear packaging just yet.

  15. Give the cartridge a little shake, about four or five times back and forth.

  16. Remove the cartridge from its clear packaging. Remove the yellow tab.

    17. Everything else, including the labels on the sides, the tape-looking stuff over the ink head at the bottom and the green chip at the back should be left alone. In fact, you should never touch the green chip. Touching it disrupt the functioning of the cartridge.
  17. Position the cartridge over the print head, as if you were going to reinsert it.

  18. Squeeze the tab, and slot the cartridge into the appropriate ink slot until it clicks into place. The print head has labels so you know which slot is for which colour.

  19. Press the ‘Start’ button – the one that looks like a diamond with a vertical line in it. The LCD display should now say ‘Checking Ink Cartridges’. 

    20. If you get an error message, you probably haven’t clicked a cartridge all the way into its slot. Check your cartridges are in place and everything is in order until you get the ‘Checking Ink Cartridges’ message.At this point, you simply wait a few minutes. Once the screen says ‘Ink Cartridge Replacement’ like it did in step 6, the process is finished
  20. Press the OK button once more to get back to the original screen.
You are now ready to print to your heart’s content. And now that you know how to replace the ink, you really can print everything you could ever want!