Maintaining Your Printer Via the Printer’s Settings

All printers needs some standard maintenance to stay in good operational condition, especially when they’ve been in operation for a long time. The occasional tune-up can help prevent unnecessary repairs or part replacements that could cost you quite a bit of money.
Some maintenance, including aligning the print head and minor cleaning of the nozzles, can even be performed from the printer’s drivers. You can access maintenance tools for your printer via the driver or your computer system’s printer control panel. Once you begin a maintenance procedure, let it complete its full cycle before you turn the printer off.

Here’s some information to know about maintaining your printer and some tips to follow, courtesy of a longtime printer outlet in Phoenix, AZ.

Checking the nozzles

Sometimes your printer’s nozzles can get clogged up. Signs of clogging include poor coloration in your prints, or when lines start to appear in your prints. You should perform a nozzle check or clean the print heads to bring those nozzles back to normal. Keep in mind that both of these maintenance processes will use ink, so you should try to avoid performing them unless it’s absolutely necessary.

To perform a nozzle check, use the utility built into your printer’s settings that performs a check pattern. This process carries out a test pattern to determine if there are any gaps. Gaps could indicate a clog in a specific ink cartridge, and fault lines will indicate some of the nozzles have somehow gotten clogged up. As such, you’ll have a better idea of what the issue is and what you’ll need to do to remedy it.

Cleaning the print heads

If the result of your nozzle check indicates either a clog in your printer or that there are dirty components, your first step should be to clean the print heads. In doing so, you will clear out any blockages that currently exist in the nozzles. Once you’ve completed this process, run another nozzle check, as cleaning might need to be performed more than once for it to be completely successful.

There are some printers that have been designed with multiple cleaning modes. You should begin with whatever the standard cleaning mode is first, before jumping right into the deep cleaning mode if absolutely necessary. Again, the process consumes ink, so you should try to avoid performing any unnecessary cleanings.

Realigning the print heads

Your nozzle test might also indicate your lines or colors are somehow out of whack. Aligning the print heads should solve this problem. You should always do this process when you install new print heads, but you might need to run it at other times if there are issues with your printer.

Cleaning and alignment will not always solve every issue, but it’s important to know how to do them. If you are in need of further guidance with regard to your printer issues, we encourage you to contact Arizona Copier Outlet for printer repair. We’re pleased to be your trusted printer outlet in Phoenix, AZ!

Categorised in: Printer Repair