Keeping printers for a rainy day..

[The Hat]

I have decided to mothball 4 of my printers because I am not doing enough work to keep them all happy and it can be a pain in the ass to run nozzle checks and test prints just to keep them all in peek condition, for no reason.

Besides ink has been rising sharply recently from the currency exchange rates and ink cost is usually not a problem for me, but if I am only wasting the ink for the purposes of maintenance then it doesn’t make sense to continue this practice indefinitely, a printer Potty is great for monitoring your ink wastage.

Here's how:-
I removed the cartridges and heads and then reinstalled the head again just to force a purge clean, after I'd poured a lot of window cleaner all over the purge pads just to let it clean the area and dump some of the remaining ink that was left in the heads.

I removed the heads and soak them in warm water and washing up liquid overnight and next day rinse each head under running water till it ran clear and then left them to dry before boxing them up for use later, besides if the heads go AWOL on some of the printers I can’t get replacements..

 

[palombian]

After some disappointments with printheads I've rinsed and stocked dry (as The Hat should know), I now stock the entire printer "wet" with cartridges filled with pharmacist solution (after some cleaning cycles, IMO also good for the purge system).
I have one who really is mothballed as spare for my most used printer, and a first check after 6 months was 100% positive.
Another one is used as travel printer and sleeps for not more than 3-4 months.

 

[TinderboxUK]

Not a problem for cartridges with built in print heads, if it gets seriously blocked, dump it.

If the print head is built it, always make sure to keep an ink cartridge with ink in place, so that the print head does not dry out, you could buy empty new cartridges and fill them with a carriage flush???, instead of ink and then install, then into the printer, try a cleaning cycle to flush the tubes???

This might work.

John.