Posted on 10/12/2013 10:16:06 AM PDT by knarf
I bought new cartridges about two or three months ago .. both color and black and I printed a little back then ...
I don't think I used that much ink before so my question is ...
Apparently ink nozzles dry up over time .... can I use the cart, take it out and store it in a baggie for future use or something.?
It's a canon printer, cheapo 50 bucks or so, but works using B30 and B31 carts
I’ve always taken a good Q-tip and dipped it in alcohol and wiped out the jet surface.....sometimes it takes two or three swipes...
Try running the cleaning function—I think one of the things it’s supposed to do is unclog heads. What I’d worry about with your plan is that the chip in the cartridge might tell the printer it had already been used when you tried to put it back in.
I had one dry up like that, but it wasn’t the cartridges. It was the ink jets. I never could get them unplugged and had to throw out the printer. I tried alcohol on cotton swabs. In my case it dried up because it lived in the back of my car for a couple of weeks.
If your printer has a nozzle cleaning utility, then you should try that.
I don’t think that removing the cartridges makes good sense as the ink downstream from the cartridge would be exposed to air and dry out.
When you need color, take it to Walmart, Costco, Fedex, etc.
Take them out and shake ‘em.
I’ve wiped mine gently over a damp paper towel. Don’t go back and forth. Just keep making swipes in the same direction until the ink starts to flow again.
Color lasers are fairly cheap these days too. They still rip you off on laser toner cartridges (unless you go 3rd party) but it is nothing like the ink jet scam.
now you know why your printer only cost you $50. Ink is where the profit is. As others have stated you can try to clean with q-tips and etoh. Good luck.
Some cartridges have a little time reset button to press and restart the countdown. Its real small...paperclip size.
These carts are real rip off to the public imo.
I'll look into a laser jet
Printers are a headache. It is best to get really intimate with their workings because they always seem to give you problems.
There should be a utility that tells you your ink levels.
There is ... and it always says low ink .. even after one or two prints from a new cart ... I ignore the prompt.
Just a thought...
Can you print out a printer cartridge on a 3D printer?
If so, you may never have to buy a new ink cartridge again!
Stupid simple thing but have you tried rebooting everything?
The worst was my wife's printer which used the Lexmark 1 cartridge. A tiny bit of expensive photo quality ink for all uses. Once you pulled off the tape it was good for about 8 pages or one week, whichever came first. Cartridges for cheap printers have become a huge ripoff.
I went thru the exact same thing with a Canon printer. Loved the size of it and its performance but had nothing but hell with the carts, or at least I thought it was the carts. Even started filling my own carts with and had the computer reset thing.
As it turned out the jets in the printer head is what dries up and when that happens it is time to chunk it as the printer head is about 150 bucks. But I did have a long time Canon service hand tell me it can all be avoided by just printing something, anything once a week to keep fresh ink in the print head.
It has to do with the physical location of the power supply in relation to the print head and carts when the printer is in standby, heat form the PS.
I think I’m in the latter category.
Would MeOH work also?
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