While replacement of ink cartridges as well as installing the printhead and setting up wireless networking is often covered by the manual, few if no manufactures have cared to write a guide on how to deal with clogged printheads. There is of course a perfectly good reason for this in that a new printhead will often set you back more than you paid for the printer itself, which leaves you the expense of buying a new printer - or trying to solve the matter yourself.
Now, since there are several types of printers on the market, including Epsons with a fixed printhead that makes it very difficult if not impossible to clean, and this article is written as an introduction to the subject, rather than a guide to a specific type of printer, please go about cleaning your printhead only if you feel absolute confident about the task.
It makes little sense to tell you - should you be the happy owner of an Epson printer with a fixed printhead - that these are considered to be of somewhat higher quality than those of competitor brands, and therefore should not require the same level of maintainance…because you wouldn’t be reading this article then, would you? Well, the good news is that I have an advice for you as well, but the result may depend on you beeing able to actually reach the printhead.
The main reason that printheads become clogged are a lack of use of the printer. The ink will simple dry and block the nozzles through which the ink is applied to the paper. The nozzles of a modern inkjet printer are capable of delivering amounts of ink as little as 1 picolitre. A picolitre is 10-12 L which might give you an idea of how small an amount of ink, dirt or dust is required to clogg it.
The ink tends to dry into a hardened mass that is not easily cleaned, but still do not under any circumstances try to remove dry ink with a tool of any kind. Even a needle is many times the thickness of a nozzle and could damage the printhead altogether.
The way to go is with either hot water or isopropyl alcohol. First run the cleaning/service rutine as described by the manufacturer 10 times and if there is no visible results or improvement, go ahead with the following:
Open the printer and locate the cartridges which sits in connection with the printhead. Remove the printhead and soak it in hot water or isopropyl alcohol and leave it on the desk till the morning, then inspect it before inserting it back into the printer. If this dosen’t work put a few drops of hot water in the cartridge and run the cleaning rutine. Note: If you possess an old cartridge use that, widening the hole at the top to help insert the water.
source: http://goo.gl/qZOox
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