Why You Should Avoid an Inkjet Printer from Being Idle for Too Long

Keeping an inkjet printer idle for months on end is not the best way to maintain the printer or to save on ink. To keep the printer and ink cartridges properly functioning, it needs regular cleaning and maintenance.

How to maintain your inkjet printer:

Newer printers have self cleaning system that is built into the inkjet printer. However, older style printers do not. Each manufacturer has their own specific cleaning instructions that are printed in the manual. It gives tips on how to clean the printer head, rollers and ink cartridges inside the printer.  If you no longer have the original manual, manufacturers will normally have it in their website.

The simplest thing to do is use your printer regularly. This will keep the printer and its ink cartridge running smoothly. Leaving the printer unused for long periods of time, may cause internal problems. Print at least once every week to ensure that the printer and ink cartridge are working properly. Even if it’s a test page, at least it is being used.

Printer heads clogging up is one of the biggest problems with ink jet printers. To ensure proper printer function, always test your printer by printing a test page. This must be done on a regular basis in order to check if the printer or ink cartridges are working fine. To clean the ink cartridge, remove it from the printer and clean them off using a Q-tip dipped in a bit of water. Wipe the inside of your inkjet printer at least once a week using a non lint cloth. This helps the printer’s print quality.

Following these few tips will help maintain your ink cartridge and printer.

How to Extend the Life of Your Printer Ink Cartridge

Extending the life of your printer ink cartridge is quite easy. Shaking the cartridge isn’t the only way to get more ink out of the cartridge, which, by the way, can cause leakage. By following a few simple steps, you can help prolong the life of the printer ink cartridge and allow you to be less wasteful, and help the environment in the long run.

   1. Preview your documents. Previewing a document before printing is the best way to avoid printing documents with errors. Typographical errors or misaligned images on the page can resort to printing loads of paper to get the correct information printed out. Using a spellchecker, grammar checker, and the Preview option in your computer can help save ink and paper.

   2. Print Draft-quality prints. If it is necessary to print out a document to double-check image alignment or general errors, use draft-quality printing. This can be set in your printer software. This way the amount of ink used will be minimal.

  

3. Print regularly. Use your printer regularly. Print draft-quality prints if necessary as long as it is being used. The ink cartridge can dry up when the printer is left unused for a long period of time. Dried printer ink can clog your printer head which can produce low quality printouts or worse, damage your printer head.

4. Unplug your printer when not in use. Power the printer down properly and unplug it from the wall. Heat from the electricity may cause the ink to clog the printer head. Clogged print heads can print low quality printouts and can overall damage the printer.

Following these few easy steps will lengthen the life of your ink cartridge. This article was brought to you by IMSinkspot.com.

How To Protect Your Printer Cartridges from Electrostatic Discharge in the Winter Months

Take special care when handling print
cartridges during the winter months.

In the winter months, you must take special care when handling and installing printer cartridges because of the dry winter air. Electrostatic discharge or ESD is harmful to many electronic components, including standard office equipment like computers and printers. ESD happens when a person has accumulated a potential electrical difference - through friction or even dry winter air - and completes a circuit, usually by touching a conductive surface such as metal. This produces an electrical discharge that may be too much for an integrated circuit to handle and thus burns and ruins it, as the flow of electrical current follows the path of least resistance.

Printer cartridges are vulnerable to ESD and thus measures have been created to prevent blowing out cartridges when someone needs to change them. Some measures include adding protection circuitry into the components, anti-static packaging, shielding covers over conductive surfaces, and anti-static devices such as grounding wires or grounding rugs. An external solution exists, so that companies do not have to redesign their products or buy expensive anti-static devices that cease to work when removed.

For printer cartridges, ground rings and spark gaps can be implemented to the exterior of the product. Ground rings work by forcing a new path of least resistance, so ESDs pass by the vulnerable circuits unscathed and dissipate into the printer safely. Spark gaps work by having contact points on the printer cartridge that all connect to several empty spaces, so ESDs readily follow these points to the gaps, where the potential electrical difference is lost when the ESD has to jump these gaps. Ground rings and spark gaps even reduce the chance of ESD during the manufacturing process.

This article about how to protect your printer cartridges from electrostatic discharge was brought to you by IMSinkspot.com