Printing: Simple "How To's" and Tips
Posted: Monday, May 07, 2007
by James McFarlane
PC Tips Tweaks and Maintenance
With the price of ink out pacing the price of printers in many cases, it is very important to print wisely and properly maintain your printer AND cartridges. Wasting ink is no simple matter, it can end up quite a time waster as well as a money waster. Hopefully the following will help.
Standard printing tips:
Standard printing tips:
* If you are only printing a couple of dozen photos,
do not do it yourself it is more economical to drop off your memory card or CD at
a shop. Many shops now have self print kiosks where you can edit and print your photos.
* Stick with brand name ink. It will cost more than off brand ink, but it will last longer and produce better quality photos. Cheap ink has been known to dry directly on the printer heads which can cause performance problems and damage the heads.
* To give your prints the professional look, and to increase their life, be sure to use premium photo paper.
* Replacement cartridges are a good idea to keep on hand IF you make sure they're in a sealed container so no air can prematurely dry them. NEVER open a cartridge box/bag until you are ready to install it in your printer.
* If you're printing information from a web site, look for the 'Print' button on the page as it should reduce the amount of graphics and banner advertising around the article itself. If it does not have one, select the text you want to print and paste it into a standard word processor and print from there.
* Practice 'selective printing' – decide what you really need on paper and what you can keep in digital format. If you look through your photos, you'll probably realize you didn't need to print them all and might even find some you want to discard. The same can be said of most documents.
* When your printer informs you it's time to replace the cartridge – you can ignore the warning for a while. You probably have enough ink for quite a few prints. When you begin to see the black text fading or the color just isn't right in a photo, then change it.
* Before printing anything (especially a page from a Web site), select 'Print Preview' from the File tab to see what it will look like when printed so that you can catch mistakes before wasting ink.
Important Tip:
If
you are going on a vacation for an extended period ink cartridges left in
your printer may dry out. It is similar to leaving the lid off paint tins;
eventually the ink will thicken and dry blocking the print-heads. Remove ink
cartridges before you leave, being sure you follow the instructions provided in
your printer manual. Wrap the cartridges in plastic wrap then place them in a sealed container and leave in a cool dark place. This should help keep them
from drying out and they can be re-installed once you return. Use your
maintenance software when you do re-install them to clean and prime the heads
again. It is a good idea to print in color and black at least once in 2 to 3 weeks
(some cartridges will dry out sooner than others). If the cartridge is already
dried out, do not use it to print, it can damage the print head.
If you do suffer from Clogged Printer Heads:
In some occasions it is impossible to avoid clogged inkjet cartridges. On many occasions, those cartridges with built in print heads can be unblocked by the following steps:
Water
Based Ink Cartridges:
Remove
the cartridge; according to the instructions in your printer manual. Take the
cartridge to a work area that will not matter if you spill ink (a utility sink
is a good place). Fold a few sheets of paper towel and dampen them with warm bottled
water - do not use tap water. Take the blocked printer cartridge and dab the
printer heads into the moist paper towel. Let it soak for a few minutes. This
should result in the warm water being drawn into the printer heads assisting
the clearance of old dried/thick ink. You need to dissolve and clean up any old
residue and ink before re-installation. Once you see all colors showing on the
damp paper towel then it should be OK to try the cartridge back in your
printer. Make sure you dry the printer heads off with a clean paper towel sheet
before re-installing the cartridge. You may have to repeat this process a
number of times if your cartridge is badly blocked.
Oil Based Ink Cartridges:
For
oil based inks follow the same instructions above but use isopropyl alcohol
instead of warm water.
Cleaning
your printer:
Most people are unaware that they have to maintain their printers on a regular basis to ensure consistent print quality. On many printers you will notice that when you change ink cartridges or even when you first turn the printer on the printer goes through what is known as a Print Head Cleaning and Alignment Procedure. For the life of your printer this will happen hundreds of times. You may not have noticed that while this automatic head cleaning and alignment is taking place that old ink and paper residue is being dumped into a holding bin - usually a small plastic container located on the right hand side of the printer under the lid. This is where your printer head sits when the printer is not in use. If this Ink Dump Area gets over loaded, instead of cleaning your printer cartridges it can clog them with old ink and paper dust. This sticky residue can damage the print heads and result poor quality prints or even completely block the print heads.
Please remember to regularly maintain your printer by cleaning the Print Dump Container and the
Cartridge Parking area. You should have detailed instructions in your printer
manual. Basically you can use a cotton swab and some Isopropyl alcohol. Make
sure that you remove as much old ink as you can.
NOTE:
before doing this type of maintenance make sure that you disconnect the power
and you are working in an environment suitable for the job in hand.
Compliments of: PC Tips Tweaks and Maintenance
This Article has been viewed 504 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Thanks, saving money is always a good topic and printers seem to og through ink very quickly. This helps.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.