September 2004

Basic care of your inkjet printer

Inkjet printers may look like little plastic boxes with some electronics crammed inside, but they are actually very sophisticated pieces of hardware. Witness the print head zipping back and forth while spraying drops of ink the size of a red blood cell and hitting the mark with that drop thousands of times a second. Get the idea? Printers need care and should be taken care of to get consistent print quality, paper feed, and longer print life.

Part 1: Software based maintenance

Virtually all inkjet printers have functions called head cleaning and head alignment.

The head cleaning cycle insures all ink nozzels are clear and free of any obstructions. What to look for: You heads need to be cleaned if you start seeing a color shift in prints or faint areas. This usually means a particular color is not being put on the paper. Make sure to run a nozzel check periodically to see if any heads are blocked. Always run a cleaning if your printer has set for more than a month between printings.

Head aligmnent is a function that requires some involvement on your part. You will need a couple of sheets of plain paper for the process. Alignment insures all the nozzels are pointing the right directing and firing ink in the right place. What to look for: White repeating lines or a grid like pattern on your print can indicate misalignment of heads. Perform this function when needed.

Maintenance screen shots Mac

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