Canon pixma mp510 ink absorber almost full / Canon pixma mp510 absorptiekussen bijna vol

IMy printer showed me this error message: Canon pixma mp510 ink absorber almost full. Please contact the service center.
Here's how I dealt with it:

What is the problem? 

Your printer performs head cleaning by forcing ink through the heads to remove dirt. This ink goes into the waste ink tank, which fills up.
Your printer does not really measure this, but when the page printing counter goes over a threshold it displays this message. You can press OK to make the message go away, but when the counter goes over a second threshold, the message will become: "ink absorber full" and you cannot print anymore.

Contacting the service center will cost you more than a new printer, so basically this message says: this printer is designed to fail, buy a new printer.

Option: replacing the print absorber

If you want to play "self-service" center, you can find the service center manual, with all instructions here. Here's the manual section on partial replacement of the main absorber:

I did not actually try this, but google says you can try to extend the life of your absorber pads by washing, drying and putting them back.

Resetting the counter

Next you need to reset the counter.
More often then not, the waste thank is not full at all, so you can risk just resetting the counter.
Here be dragons: when the tank really fills up, the printer might spill quite some ink!


I did not succeed resetting the counter with the instructions in the service manual (go into service mode, press reset four times, press power).

However I had success with this method from tricks-collections (actually for mp520):

1. Switch printer off
2. Press OK/BW copy/RESET simultaneously (1/2/3 in picture below)
   
3. Press on/off (button 4) while keeping the above buttons pressed.
4. When printer is on, release buttons 1/2/3
5. This might actually be enough, but just to be sure I pressed buttons 1/2/3 while i switched the printer off again.