Almost inevitably, everything works better when it is
clean, from mechanical things, such as jet printer printheads to the mind of
man (or woman). In fact, Macbeth, worried about his wife’s health, questions
the doctor whether he can cure her by some form of mental cleaning as follows:
"Can'st thou not raze out the written troubles
of the brain,
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"
With inkjet cartridges that ‘perilous stuff’ is
dried ink or dust or a combination of both and the ‘oblivious antidote’ is
the gentle and effective cleaning solution delivered by our brand new ink jet
cleaning cartridges.
Mechanically speaking, there are two types of inkjet
cartridges:
- Those that have the printhead built into itself,
for example HP 51626A, 51629A, 51645A etc.
- Those where the printhead mechanism is inside the
printer itself, most Epson, many Canon etc.
That printheads need cleaning is known to your very
printer. Most printers, when turned on, produce various and occasionally
worrisome sounds of clanging, groaning, shrieking metals and components
rubbing against each other. Operations manuals refer to this process as the
‘cleaning cycle’.
When recharging cartridges of the first type, the
printhead is immediately accessible and various cleaning methods can be
applied, e.g. soaking in distilled water or cleaning solution, ultrasound etc.
But when the printhead is in the printer cleaning is
more problematic. Reaching the printhead with a wet cotton swab is in most
printers difficult. When there is no room for a swab some have tried with wet
paper. Either way the idea is good but the result is remarkably useless. To
clean the printhead, the cleaning liquid must follow the same path the ink
followed and remove the ink residue.
….enter our Cleaning Cartridges designed to clean
the printhead when the printhead is in the printer.
Here is how it works:
- First you remove the existing cartridge(s). Some
printers have a special procedure to remove a partially filled cartridge
(for example, by depressing both cartridge buttons on the Epson Stylus
Color 800), or in others by holding down the paper feed button. Otherwise,
you remove the cartridge(s) following the standard operating procedures in
the manual.
- You then switch off the printer and switch it on
again after about 15 seconds, and then wait until all indicator lights are
out.
- Now you install the cleaning cartridges into the
printer.
- After this you print 2-3 pages on standard paper
until the print (generated by the grime you intend to clean) is no longer
visible, that is the paper comes out un-printed.
- Run the machine nozzle check clean cycle and
inspect the (faint) printout to verify that all the nozzles are clear and
that liquid (cleaner now and ink later) is delivered to the paper.
- Remove the cleaning cartridges and replace them
with ink cartridges.
- Print 1 or 2 test pages to ensure that all
cleaning fluid is removed from the printhead
- Go ahead and print your copy or your graphics.
Cleaning cartridges will last quite a while because
you only use them when cleaning the printhead. Cleaning fluid does not
deteriorate with time. You will get excellent value out of them, besides
having quality printouts.
