Being kind to printers

[mick2me 3,033]

I've come to the conclusion that the worst thing you can do to a printer is not to use it.

The heads dry up and take a lot of flushing out to clear them.

Head cleaning also takes lots of ink.

There is now way I am going to buy OEM printer ink at those prices.

For the amount of printing I have to do both text and image, I have found re filling my own

far far cheaper. I also invested in a Chip resetter, as they soon show empty and the printer refuses

to work. Once the chip has been reset, it continues to print for ages. I sispect the cartridges are

set to show empty when around 1/3rd full.

I purchased an old Epson Stylus C64 printer off ebay for 12 quid. It showed a maintenance error,

two flashing light. All it needed was downloading a resetting program. After a set time it shows this

to tell you that the sponge in the bottom of the printer is full of ink and needs changing by the service

department. Yeah right!

Last week I bought three colour and two black cartridges off ebay for £4 including posting and their fine.

My chip resetter even works with them.

Though I am printing lots of text documents, I print a colour photograph daily to keep all the ink heads

working and clear.

Tight? Moi?

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

There are cleaning fluids, oil based, which work to some extent, Windex also cleans clogged print heads to some extent too, but print head nozzles are like engine injectors, they have several very fine holes, and it's impossible to unblock all of them.

Never tried it, but will, it's probably best to remove the cartridge, put some sellotape over the bottom openings, and drip some Windex into the cartridge holder to flush ink out the print heads before leaving the printer for any time.

I've managed to clean printheads with Windex, done a perfect test print, gone to do my project only to find it's a mess....

[mick2me 3,033]

I use the flush that you buy with a set of bottles of ink.

I doubt you can get windex here?

We have windolene, which is like a pink paste!

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Windex is an ammonia based glass cleaner, blue in colour and is as thin as water.

[Limey 242]

The ONLY time I have had problems with a print-head clogging up was when I used "off brand" cartridges - this was in an Epson printer. Since then I switched to a Canon - but it went through ink like water, so I did some research and finished up with an HP which had the lowest per-page print cost. I have used HP inkjets at work for many years and found that even after sitting unused for many months (nine in one case), the printer worked perfectly!

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

I only started having problems with printers since the change over from cartridge with built in heads to the type with printheads on the printer.

My old HP lasted for many years and God only knows how much printing it did in it's time, it was the 1150C. Never had a printer last as long apart from the old dot matrix ones.

The Kodak's were advertised as being skimpy on ink usage, yeah right! They seem to drink ink by the bucketful.

[Gilly 8]

Three weeks ago my cartridges ran out, i bought some non branded ones that didn't work after printing one picture, the branded ones came out at about 40 quid, I logged onto the web, and search for HP printers, I got a HP 3050 all in one wireless printer including cartridges for £34.99 at Tesco Direct it came express delivery £5 next morning, the cartridges were standard HP Cartridges not the starter ones so bonus all round, all in one printer (print scan copy), wireless (I can print from mobile fone and email direct to the printer as well as everyone with a laptop for 500 yards) and cartridges for £39.99

[Gilly 8]

Warm water and a tissue...to clean printer heads job a guddun.......

[mick2me 3,033]

I'll gi it a try