A very simple cartridge question.

[jtoolman]

Do you still have the R220? and is it operating fine? If so, you can actually refill your carts using little accessories from Rjettek and a resetter.
What my Epson OEM refill video when you get a chance. They will out live your printer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB8QspjBbhk
One the Epson Carts that I can refill due to their "Friendly" design, I will not use anything but refilled and reset OEM carts.
The newer ones have some sort of wetness sensor that will short out when the sensor no longer detects ink in the cart. It renders it unusable for refilling.

 

[mikling]

I also had a set of R220 auto-reset carts suddenly stop being recognized by the printer last year

Sometimes this is the fault of the printer firmware in some strange loop. You should try using SSC utility and do a soft reset. This has worked before and is actually worth a shot because the 220 is such a capable printer considering its vintage.

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

When it happened, I bought a new set of carts and they worked. I would soft reset with SSC about every six months, I was always paranoid about hitting the waste counter limit. The R220 burnt out in January, no matter what I did the black would not work. I tried multiple cleaning methods and every single cart I had from several suppliers so I'm almost positive the printer itself was dead. I needed wide-format printing anyway. I still have an unused R220 lurking somewhere in storage. I may pull it out and turn it into a sublimation printer eventually.

I am using pigment inks so I can't simply use Epson dye carts for the 1400 and fill them with pigments. The only way to do this would be to somehow get ahold of some Ultrachrome carts and swap the chips, and then you don't know if mixing a different pigment into them with slightly different gamut would work. Or if the different types of inks would have a bad reaction together. I kind of don't have a choice. I would regret not starting out with an R2000 from the start, but since I plan on bringing the printer to art shows, I'd prefer to have a $200 printer stolen, dropped, or be a victim of performance art vs a $500 one.