Keeping unused printers uncloged

[pagebooks]

A number of posts have emphasized the importance of not letting a printer remain idle for extended periods of time. Because of business travel I'm sometimes unable to exercise my printers for as long as two weeks. I use Canon printers with cartridges that can be removed form the printhead. Would it be useful to employ the following strategy before an extended trip?
1. Temporarily remove the current cartridges from the printhead.
2. Install a set of homemade head cleaning cartridges (filled only with head cleaning solvent).
2. Print five pages of a test pattern using the head cleaning cartridges.
3. Reinstall the original ink-filled cartridges in the printhead.
4. Pull the power plug so that the printer will not run a head cleaning operation until I return from my trip.

 

[Music Image]

Hi pagebooks, I'll just share my experience and give my 2c worth.

I have had my printer for about a year and a half and frequently left my printer unplugged and unused for 2 0r 3 weeks and occasionally 4 and I haven't had any problems yet through doing this. Sometimes I use it daily for a week and sometimes not, though I try and remember to at least print something every week or so. So I wouldn't worry too much unless printer models differ in this. I can only speak for my own experince. Also as I understand it, when you remove the head, you'll get a deeper cleaning cycle which can really start to add up if it happens a lot and more so if you use OEM inks. Someone more experinced than I, may be able to help with your own suggestions.

HTHs
Music Image.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I think you have a good idea putting in cleaning cartridges and printing some pages to purge the cleaning solution into the print head but unless you do this with both plain paper and photo paper settings, only one of your black cartridges will get purged (assumming you have both a pigment and a dye black cartridge). The pigment black is used only with the plain paper setting and the dye black is used only with any photo paper setting. You might get just as good results by turning the printer off and on which will initiate a head cleaning cycle. You can easily test that the cleaning solution has made its way to the nozzles by doing a nozzle check and seeing that hardly anything is printed.

 

[fotofreek]

cleaning cycles dump ink into the waste tank and hasten the day for resetting and possible need for cleaning. Use a purge file to print bars of colors. Available from MIS on download.