Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Gosh, I actually managed to fix my printer

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Topic: Gosh, I actually managed to fix my printer

Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 07-24-2018 06:29 PM

We have an HP all-in-one at home of 2012 vintage. I use it mainly for scanning, and for printing photos, the quality of which is actually pretty good if you use the "Maximum DPI" setting, even with aftermarket paper and cartridges filled from no-name bottled ink.

After about probably 15-20 refills of the cartridges that came with the printer, the output started getting streaky and the colors bad. The printer's own cleaning process wasn't helping anymore. A new print head would have been $150: given that the machine itself only cost $250 new, I was about to look for a replacement. However, I noticed that various Ebay sellers were selling print head cleaning kits, that consist of a bottle of fluid, a syringe, and a long blunt needle. You flush the fluid through the printhead from the intake point, by inserting the needle into the one-way valve that mates to the ink cartridge, and pumping the fluid out through the head itself using the syringe.

At $15 for a kit, I thought it was worth the gamble, and it paid off. The procedure was very messy (glad I did it in the backyard!), but when all was done (i.e. I had clear fluid coming through all four channels), the print quality was indistinguishable, to my eyes, from when the machine was new out of the box. That was about a year ago, and it's still going strong.

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