How to Prolong the Life of Your INK-JET Cartridges
Many cartridges rely on there being ink in the print head before they print. This may sound silly but, by design, even if there is no ink present the cartridge will still attempt to print and in doing this it will more than likely "burn" out the ink-jets that do the work of printing. An occasional routine should be established to take the cartridge out of the printer and check, to ensure there is ink available. If there is less than 2-3ml, either refill the cartridge or replace it.
The location of your cartridge is extremely important. The print head in most cartridges is very susceptible to drying out if the ink dries in the print head; there are no easy ways of removing the dried ink. An ultrasonic bath will sometimes be successful.
The recommendation from Print Saver is that you leave the cartridge in the machine. Only take it out at replacement or when you are taking it to be refilled then carefully wrap it in "Glad-Wrap" to seal it in and bring it along to Print Saver for refilling.
A few days (or even hours) given the right circumstances will dry the print head out.
- Care needs to be taken to keep the print head clean to stop the ink from "clogging" and giving inconsistent results. Run the printer supplied "head cleaning routine" on a regular basis.
At Print Saver we always run the cartridge through a thorough cleaning process before filling to ensure the best possible results.
- All cartridges that contain print heads (such as HP, Canon) contain some circuitry in-built into the cartridge. These circuits will wear out over time. When this occurs the only solution is to buy another one, bearing in mind though that properly maintained and used correctly, a cartridge can be recycled up to 9-10 times before it dies!
- Ink jet cartridges are designed to be a disposable item. Although you can refill them many times (up to 10) they will break down sometime and it could be anywhere from fill #1 to #10. With this in mind, always have a spare cartridge handy it’s always at the most inconvenient time that they break down.