TIP: avoiding dried up/blocked ink-jet carts

Printer only used monthly , perhaps when new then parking in the cart dock at the side perhaps works, but not when years old. A bit of a bind, but less of a bind than squirting air-duster etc to unblock an ink cart etc etc. At the end of each session remove the carts. Grab a couple of couple of large party balloons with the neck cut off. Stretch over the active face of each cart with a drop of meths/denatured-alcahol in each balloon and store on a ledge with balloons dangling.

Reply to
N_Cook
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How many cycles are the printer to cart connectors rated for?

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

get a cheap laser printer and stop fussing with it best thing i ever did m

Reply to
makolber

+100
Reply to
tabbypurr

Same here.

I don't print much and got one of the Samsung laser printers for less than $ 150. Don't recall the price, but it was one of the all in one types. The HP ink is almost as much as that printer was for a set of Black and color cartrages

Just printers are much less.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

What about when the heads are not integral to the carts ? If this one here cleans up OK it would be nice to avoid it in the future.

Note this is someone else's printer, I have a LASER. However it is in the basement and people might not want to go all the way down there to print, or when I get it back on the network, to grab their stuff out of it.

My other option would be to move it to a more central location but space is a problem, the thing is big.

Reply to
jurb6006

Me too. Black and white is plenty for 99.9% of what I print. (mostly music) The rest I email to Walmart or Staples. I'm still on the first toner cartridge and it's been several years now. Of course those aren't cheap.

When the kids were in school we needed color for projects. Not any more.

Reply to
Tim R

Reminds me of the times when I did 2 colour printing on a B&W printer. Quite glad they're over! Daisy wheel it was, one print in black, 2nd pass in black with italic daisywheel, 3rd pass with red ribbon.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

I should say this is for 3 print-offs on card per month for posters. I doubt I'll be buying a colour laser m/c. I could see myself going to a High St print shop once a month or perhaps getting 20 or so generic card posters done at such a print shop and then overprint with my trusty monochrome HP laser printer, just the changing details once a month. I doubt the so-called cheap colour laser printers will allow 300gm/m^2 or stiffer card through them.

Reply to
N_Cook

My Canon I hardly use. It just uses ink even while off. Lucky I found cheap cartridges takes 5.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

The ONLY way to avoid bloced jet nozzles is to TOTALLY AVOID inkjet printers. I CURSE the things! I curse my stupidity in rescuing some of them from the trash at work and trying to make them work.

We had some at work, and every Monday morning I had to fiddle with them to get them unblocked. Just 2 days idle during the weekend and they were in trouble.

Give me a laser printer, please! (Wax jet is the 2nd choice, but the ink is expensive.)

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

I was watching the latest David Attenborough natural history series and nature got there first. Apparently the mottled colouration on bird eggs is due to an inkjet printer like process. The caulm containg yolk and albumen is rotated in a chamber with multiple ducts that eject a different colour calcium based chemical formulation at different times building up the patterning, clever stuff. Millions of years before Epson,Canon, HP etc

Reply to
N_Cook

That is so cool. I had no idea that was how the eggs got that look. Thanks for posting. Eric

Reply to
etpm

If it was anyone else other than Attenborough saying that, I'd have disbelieved them. I've never seen an egg with streaks on it, so difficult to believe that mechanism.

Reply to
N_Cook

That sounds rather like Epson with separate heads/carts. Got so tired of trying to revitalise those that I swore off Epson completely.

Still have an olde HP900 series inker that seems to fire up fine about every six months, and a Canon that rattles/clunks/whirrs for about 90 seconds at every power-up. Good thing nearly all our printing needs are mono and met elegantly/economically with an HP Laser.

Reply to
pedro

I had a rarely used Lexmark (yearly cartridge replacement, more or less). I had it for years and never had a blockage. Only got rid of it because there was no driver for Windows 10.

Reply to
Bob Engelhardt

On Friday, April 13, 2018 at 2:37:30 PM UTC-4, N_Cook wrote: I've never seen an egg with streaks on it, so

That's because Epson doesn't print eggs...

Reply to
John-Del

Another thing Epson failed to deal with - generating the substrate at the same time as the image. You have to supply your own paper, how stupid in comparison to nature.

Reply to
N_Cook

I just cleaned a Brother.

Has separate ink cartridges, the head stays. It wasn't the head, the tubes were clogged up. The black was actually what was clogged up, the others had air pockets in them. Probably got run too low for too long. I looked aroun d the internet and found out that apparently Windex is safe to use. So I to ok some tubing, removed the feed (and lost the clip) and blew Windex throug h the tube. then I fashioned a spring thing to hold what the clip used to h old and let er rip with a bunch of black only cleaning cycles to purge the cleaner and get ink in there.

The ink in the black tube actually looked dried out. I guess that;s what ha ppens when there is air in it.

It works now. The colors don't come out absolutely perfect on the test page but we'll do a bunch of color printing with the new ink in it and that sho uld take care of it. They are obviously not dried up because they work.

My last two jobs, at what they billed my labor you could have bought at lea st four of these printers with a fresh set of cartridges each, and then som e. They would definitely never take another one in once they found out how cheap they are. But I am in frugal mode right now.

Reply to
jurb6006

feed (and lost the clip) and blew Windex through the tube. then I fashioned a spring thing to hold what the clip used to hold and let er rip with a bunch of black only cleaning cycles to purge the cleaner and get ink in there.

Unless you have a heavy duty printer, it is often better just to get a new one. With printers less than $ 70 and some less than $ 50, just get a new one and the ink cartridges for less than $ 150. A repair bill will cost a lot and then you still have to pay for the ink.

Company my son works for got talked into a deal with Canon for their printers. It is a large company,but they have 3 men just for office type printers. Most of the time they just sit around. For what they pay for that conract, they could probalby buy everyone a new printer every year.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

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