Print Head Cleaning Guide February 18, 2010 15:26 by Huw Carrington
Welcome to the Print head cleaning guide from Stinkyink. These tips work for the vast majority of these manufacturer printers. If your printer is different then comment below and we'll get it added!
Important Note: If 4-6 print head cleaning cycles do not improve your print then turn the printer off for 6 hours before trying again. If that doesn’t sort the problem, get in touch with the manufacturer.
I've split our advice by manufacturer and you can use these links to skip ahead to the tips relevant to your printer:
Brother
Canon
Epson
HP
Lexmark
Ending Pointers
Brother
Brother have a beautifully simple maintenance system. Brilliantly, you can choose to only do head cleaning processes on the black or colour cartridges, you don’t have to necessarily do both, so make sure you select the colours you're having issue with and you'll save some ink!
- Aligning Brother Print Heads
Press the ‘Ink Management’ button, then select ‘Test Print’ on the little screen, then ‘Alignment’ and choose whether to do just Mono (black and white) or Colour. With the test sheet printed off, just select which of the samples most closely matches number 0.
- Brother Print Head Cleaning
Press the ‘Ink Management’ button, then select Cleaning, and choose which print head(s) to clean. That’s it!
- Brother Nozzle Checks
As with seemingly all Brother maintenance routines, you press ‘Ink Management,’ then select ‘Test Print’ and then ‘Print Quality.’ Once you select ‘Colour Start’ it should print a test-sheet, and you then just need to follow the instructions you get given.
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Canon
Before any of these troubleshooting tips are run, you need to load some plain paper, open the output tray, move the ‘Paper Thickness Lever’ to the left, open the Printer Properties dialog box (on your computer), and go to the Maintenance Tab ; things split at this point, depending on what you’re trying to do...
- Aligning Canon Print Heads
Select 'Print Head Alignment’ and then ‘OK.’ After it’s printed hit ‘Yes’ and then check the printed pattern, selecting the number of the box in each column with the least notable streaks, before confirming the displayed message and clicking ‘OK.’
- Canon Print Head Cleaning Cycle
A standard Print Head Cleaning cycle is done by clicking ‘Cleaning’ on the Maintenance tab, then waiting a little bit until a message comes up; confirm it and click ‘Print Check Pattern.’ From this you can then tell what sort of Deep Clean you need to do by which lines (black or colour) are faded.
Trek back to the Maintenance Tab and this time go to Deep Cleaning and follow the on-screen instructions.
- Canon Nozzle Checks
This is near enough identical to the Aligning of the Print Heads (you click ‘Nozzle Check’ instead of ‘Print Head Alignment’), just without the choosing of streak patterns.
A great tip for all Canon printers is this: Find yourself the Canon website and go to support. Once here, type in the model of your Canon printer into the search bar, and it should bring up all of the support topics for it. Scroll through until you find the one describing just what you want to do, and read it!
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Epson
The various handbooks I managed to find for Epson were quite straightforward, clear, and as pleasant to use as these things get.
However, they refer to each button on the printer with an image, instead of calling it whatever it’s called… This makes writing about them difficult, when you don’t know what they’re called.
Just for your reference, the ‘Stop Button’ looks like a circle with a triangle inside it, pointing down. (the lil piccy above)
- Epson Nozzle Checks
Simply load some paper, turn the printer off, and then press the Power Button while holding down the ‘Stop Button.’ It should print off the standard Epson test sheet, so you can see whether or not it’s blocked.
- Epson Print Head Cleaning
Simply turn your Epson printer off, and hold down the Power Button for 3 seconds. When the little flashing light goes solid, it’s done!
Certain models of Epson printer, such as the Epson SX515W, have a slightly different Print Head Cleaning method. Epson have kept things simple, and have combined their Nozzle Checks and Print Head Cleaning in one process. All you have to do is load some plain paper, enter ‘Setup Mode’ (there’s a little button that has some tools on it), then go to ‘Maintenance’, then ‘Nozzle Check.’ Once the test page has printed off, you get given the option to do a ‘Print Head Cleaning’ cycle.
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HP
Unlike most of their competitors, HP have focused on PC-based maintenance, where you get to all the functions through their ‘HP Solution Centre,’ which is installed at the same time as the printer’s drivers. This makes printer maintenance pretty simple if you actually know the solutions centre is there.
- HP Print Head Cleaning
This can differ across HP printer models, with two main methods. Firstly, go into the HP Solution Centre (HPSC) on your desktop, going to Settings, then Status, View Ink Levels, and finally into Device Services.
If this does not work, try going through the HPSC, Settings, Print Settings, Printer Toolbox, Device Services and select Clean Print Cartridges.
- HP Aligning the Print Heads
Load some paper, and if it’s a newly installed cartridge it’ll do an auto-print. Scan this printout, with the left front corner of the glass having the top of the sheet and it’ll auto align. If it’s not a new cartridge, you can get the alignment page by going through the HPSC, Settings, Print Settings, Printer Toolbox, Device Services, and finally Align the Print Cartridges.
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Lexmark
Wisely, Lexmark have designed their printers to have quite simple maintenance routines, accessed through the maintenance menu of the printer (typically a button with a spanner). If your printer has a menu system but no spanner button, simply scroll down until you find the option ‘Maintenance’.
- Aligning Lexmark Print Heads
Hit the spanner, select ‘Maintenance,’ and press ‘Align Print Heads’
- Lexmark Printhead Cleaning
Equally as simple, press the spanner, select ‘Maintenance’ and choose Print Head Cleaning, differing only in selecting normal or deep at the appropriate moment.
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Ending pointers:
At the end of the day, maintenance routines are useful things to do with your printer that can prolong printer and printhead life, as well as improving the quality of your printing, but they’ll inevitably differ from one printer to the next, so your best bet will almost always be to check the manual or handbook that came with your printer.
Help us Help YOU!
Have you had to run cleaning cycles on your printer? Found any great little short cuts on hints? Comment your experiences and anything constructive will be added to our information list!
10 Responses to “Print Head Cleaning Guide”
March 11, 2010 12:06
Although I now use a Lexmark and a Brother Printer, I previously use to use a couple of Epson printers, which both gave up after a time with the message "requires service" and as one of the printers had only been used a short time it gave me the impression that they were programmed to require service after a programmed time rather than the amount of use. - I would very much appreciate your comments. Regards G.F.
March 11, 2010 12:26
Hi Gordon :-)
Thank you for your comment. This is a common enquiry for these printers, and is widely believed to have a pre-set counter for when the error message comes. Whilst I am unable to confirm or deny this theory, I do have a nice little source of how to solve the problem if you ever come across it.
The second post in this forum discussion is quite indepth and should solve the problem for any Epson users out there :-)
http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/inkjet/28486
Hope this helps.
March 11, 2010 20:48
If I have any problems with my printer I find that offering to feed my son will usually get him to sort things out! - Is that why my printer isn;t mentioned, Huw?
March 14, 2010 05:07
Hi, I am a great fan of the compatibles, so why is it that one of my epson printers is happy with them but another epson (sx) appears to be a snob and will only work with original ink - at my expense!
March 15, 2010 15:50
Hi Julie - thanks for your comment.
Though it's something of a mystery as to why certain Epson printers will work with compatibles and others won't, it's thought that some of the new printers, and some that have recently been updated, require a different sort of contact chip, and so won't recognise non-Epson cartridges. It makes it more expensive right now, but we are confident that our suppliers will soon have updated their compatibles so that they will work brilliantly again, saving you money once again!
I hope this answers your question satisfactorily.
March 24, 2010 15:01
I have an SX515W which printed fine with the inks that came with it. They all ran out and have been replaced with new Epson cartridges, and now it doesn't print anything having gone through a period of deterioration. I've run head cleaning about a billion times and this only seemed to have the effect of it getting worse and worse. Is there any history of the print heads gumming up to the point of failure? The printer is now a massive 3 months old and totally useless.
March 25, 2010 09:03
Hi Tom, thanks for commenting. With Epson original inks installed, this isn't a common problem, especially if cleaning cycles make the print outs worse. It could be some kind of miscommunication between computer and printer, or printer and cartridge, so checking cable connections, and that the cartridges are in properly, could help, however with it being such a new printer I think I might suggest contacting Epson, as it should be within its warranty still.
June 21, 2010 21:31
I am now using my 2nd Canon printer. The downside of printhead cleaning is that the waste ink collects in a special tank deep inside the printer. Eventually the tank becomes full and the printer stops working. The ink tank can be emptied, but only by sending the printer to a Canon service centre. The cost of carriage & labour is expensive. For the same money you can buy a new printer with a complete set of original ink cartridges. What a shame Canon can't come up with a more user friendly solution!
September 29, 2010 16:03
I've been running a canon printer for a while now and I knew nothing about the "special tank" that collects waste? I hope it's a part that's specific to your printer otherwise the repair must surely be due soon.
March 09, 2011 18:10
If you are bothered about "print head cleaning" buy a Photosmart 8250 from H.P. It does a "Device Maintenance Occuring- Do Not Interupt" EVERY time I switch it on. It also does it before it prints if you leave it a while between tasks. It is definately driving me nuts. It also stops printing "Black Only" when it says it has run out of a colour and then it stops because a catridge " has reached expiry date". I will limit myself next time to an Epson or a Canon machine, until I read June's comment.