How to Clean Clogged Inkjet Print heads
What's on your Christmas list? A new printer, digital camera, camcorder, computer or cell phone? You can find reviews for just about anything
electronic at cnet.com. This is common knowledge to many, but not everyone
knows about this site. It's a GREAT place to get the reviews if you are thinking about buying or upgrading your electronic stuff. With the gift giving
season starting up I just wanted to pass this on if you didn't already know
about it.
Here's some cool news!
HP is developing technology to use its patented inkjet print heads to cool
computer chips and microprocessors. The article is too long for this newsletter but if you're interested, here is the link:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2002/apr-jun/cooling.html
What's next, water cooled computer cases? Oh, they already have that. :-)
http://www.coolcomputercases.com/water-cooled-computer-case.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you enjoy reading as much as I do you might appreciate CBMALL. You can search for ebooks on hundreds of subjects. This will save you many
hours of searching the internet looking for detailed information that you require. I use it all the time and it's the first place I go when I need to get
the information or training I need.
It's like a search engine for ebooks. You'll be surprised what you can find
there. It's neat because when you search for something, the results will be sorted by popularity, so you know that if a lot of other people are reading
it then it must contain something of value. Click the link for more information:
http://atlascopy.com/cbmall1.htm
.........
How to Clean Clogged Inkjet Print heads
by Blake W Patterson
A clogged print head on your inkjet printer is not a fine thing. Over time (especially when there's long periods of no printer use) the many tiny holes
that make up a modern inkjet printer's head can become clogged with dried ink.
Most printers today have some sort of cleaning routine where either you instruct the printer to go through a cleaning cycle via a program on your computer or you press a sequence of buttons on the printer itself to begin
the process. A number of these cleanings, in succession, will usually take
care of a clogged head--but not always. I recently found my year and a half old Epson Stylus Color 600 unable to print coherently using black ink
and no amount of standard cleaning-cycle run-throughs would fix the problem.
On some inkjet printers (HP's for instance) the ink cartridge contains the print
head, so changing the cartridge gives you a new, unclogged print head. My Epson's print head is part of the printer itself, and can only be replaced by a
service technician, and the cost is usually very close to the price of the
printer itself. I had to come up with something better than that, so I began
searching the web to see what people in similar predicaments had done. I found that my problem was not unique and there were some rather
successful remedies floating around.
I discovered that isopropyl alcohol (I bought a bottle of 91% alcohol at the drugstore for ~$3) is a great solvent for this sort of dried ink. There were those that recommended that I take an old, discarded ink jet cartridge, open
it, clean it out with the alcohol, fill it back up with alcohol, reseal it, and place
it in the printer for a few runs through the printer's self-cleaning method.
This proved to be a rather messy endeavor indeed, so I followed a bit of less-aggressive advice.
I simply removed the black print cartridge from the printer and dropped 7-10
drops of alcohol down in the ink-receptacle area where the ink cartridge normally sits (there should be a little hole down in there where the ink actually
flows from the cartridge into the head), replaced the ink cartridge, and ran
a few sessions of the printers head-cleaning routine. It took quite a few cleaning sessions (probably 15-20) with a few pages of text prints thrown
in there just to try and move some ink, before it cleared up.
It actually had to sit overnight, with the last few cleanings done the next morning, before all was well--but well it is. Everything works perfectly now,
and I don't have to go out and buy a new printer.
To avoid such blockages, it's a good idea to print something, both in color
and black & white (if you've got a color printer), once a week or so just to
keep things moving. But if you do end up cursed with a blocked print head--this method should take care of you.
Look for our exclusive Epson
Print Head Cleaning Kit here.
***
Till next time.
Happy printing
Barry Shultz
Atlascopy, Inc.
http://atlascopy.com
Can't find what you're looking for? Try searching Google!
|
