How to flush printer for ink test?

[ThrillaMozilla]

I want to test ink by actually running it through the printer. It all sounded very simple until I was almost ready to print. It's a simple matter to flush and refill a cartridge. But how to flush the printer? How do I know which ink is actually getting to the medium?

I have no idea how long it takes for the old ink to flush out of the print head and be completely replaced by the new ink. Is it a nozzle check? A deep cleaning cycle? (I hope not.) A few test pages? I have no idea. But many of you have faced this problem and have also dismantled your printers. Is there a good rule of thumb for this? I have an HP C309a Photosmart, which uses HP564 cartridges (similar to Canon).

 

[ghwellsjr]

What I do is put in a set of cleaning cartridges and do deep head cleanings followed by nozzle checks until nothing visible prints and then I put in the new cartridges and do the same number of additional deep head cleanings. It usually takes just two deep head cleaings for the dye inks and three deep head cleanings for pigment so you could probably just eliminate the cleaning cartridges and just put in the new cartridges and do two or three deep head cleanings depending on how sure you want to be.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

Thanks. Wow, that's a lot of ink. It usually doesn't require any cleaning at all if I change cartridges. Maybe I can just do a nozzle check and use it for a couple of weeks.

 

[ghwellsjr]

When you are changing cartridges, presumably the new ink is identical to the old ink, so it doesn't matter if there's intermixing of the inks during the priming cycle which is sufficient to get the new ink flowing but when you want to make sure you have all new ink flowing through the print head and it's almost the same color as the old ink, how else will you know for sure except by using an intermediary that is a different color (or no color at all)?

But if you don't want to waste ink and you can make sure that all your colors are being used during your normal printing for a couple weeks, then I guess that might work.

 

[ThrillaMozilla]

Truth be told, I'll probably just get impatient and purge, which probably uses about 1/3 of a cartridge per purge. But I don't have an infinite supply of cartridges. I suppose I could just spend another $100 on a set of cartridges and empty the ink. Good idea, though.