Cleaning a clogged up Inkjet Cartridge

[Tormentil]

Another method of avoiding blocked print heads/nozzles, is turn your printer on every other day or so, whether you're gonna print or not, as most printers preform a "mini clean" when turned on.

[Lancashire Lad]

The only problem with this Tormentil, is that the mini-clean loses a little ink each time the process is carried out, as the machine is "charging" the system, in readyness to print.

Regards
Mike.

[Tormentil]

Its better than using lots of ink doing a full clean, 'cause yer heads blocked. Or having to go through some of the rigmaroles described in this thread. And far cheaper than having to get cleaning fliuds.

A stitch in time, saves nine

[Lancashire Lad]

Originally Posted by Tormentil

....Its better than using lots of ink doing a full clean, 'cause yer heads blocked....

Very true.

But if you can avoid losing any of this extortionately priced ink at all, by just wiping the cartridge with hot water on a tissue, then so much the better.

Regards
Mike.

[Dutchess]

I have taken the same steps as you Mike, especially when refilling old cartridges - which can be a messy job. IMO, you can't *not* clean it up!

If you do a refill at home, one tip I'd definitely recommend is letting the cartridge dry off in situ (in the printer) for about 30 mins before attempting to print anything at all. On my first refill I wasted loads of ink (and paper) printing test pages. Next time I waited a while and the blobs and smears cleared much faster.

hth

D.

[Jim Ford]

After years of fiddling around filling cartridges, I'm now using a C.I.S.. I'll never go back to cartridges, new or refilling.

Jim

[Lancashire Lad]

I'm tempted to agree with you Jim.

I'll be considering a Continuous Ink System for my Epson 2100 when my existing stock of inks run out.

The cost of getting Epson replacement cartridges for that is in the region of £100.00 a set.

No one seems to do third party cartridges for that model, and the Epson ones are getting harder to obtain.

I can get a full CIS system with 100mil. of each of the seven required inks for about £230.00 all in, so I think that will be the way to go.

I'm still going to stick with the third party cartridges for the old HP870CXi though.

Regards
Mike.

[Tormentil]

My printer (Canon i990) was put away for several weeks while I was decorating and the inevitable has happened. Yep head completely blocked.

So looks like I'll have to take it off and give it a good soaking in hot water, to see if that does the trick, 'cause no amount of "cleaning" routines (several using cleaning cartridges) as made any difference.

If soaking don't solve the problem then I'm gonna have to decide whether to buy & fit a new head (around £70-80), or spend more on a ganz neu printer.

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by Jim Ford

After years of fiddling around filling cartridges, I'm now using a C.I.S.. I'll never go back to cartridges, new or refilling.

Jim

Same here Jim.I've had my system on my Epson RX685 for about three months now without any problems at all. The way the inks going it's going to save me a small fortune.

[Tormentil]

Well I bit the bullet and bought a new printer a few weeks ago, it's an Epson R285. I also bought a CISS kit for it.

It's taken a bit of tweaking to get things right and over all it's quite good (not as good as my old i990 though), but for the amount of printing I do it will suffice.

The only other drawback with it is, that I keep forgetting to switch it off.

With the Canon i990 switching on & off was automatic. When I hit a "print" button it switched on, printed what I wanted and if nothing else was sent to it, within 20 minutes it switched its self off. A very good facility I thought, shame Epson don't include this in their software (or I have n't found it !!).