Nothing can be more irritating than a clogged inkjet printhead on a busy office day. But with just a few simple steps you can make sure that never happens. How?
Dried ink, dust, and small junks are the primal reason behind the clogged printheads. These small particles block the tiny holes of the printhead. As a result, you get trashy prints from your printer. So, cleaning your printhead on a regular basis can solve this issue.
But How To Clean Inkjet Printer Heads?
Well, This step-by-step tutorial is all about cleaning your printhead and preventing your printhead from clogging again. So, stay with us.
How To Clean Printer Heads In 2023
Before moving onto the cleaning part, you need to fully understand the printhead clogs. Because only if you understand the clog then you can act accordingly.
Types of Clogs
Here are 3 types of clogs
- Straight Clogs: These clogs are the most common and easy to remove clogs. Straight clogs are normally caused by air bubbles.
- Chesty Clogs: These are kind of stubborn clogs and are normally caused by dried inks. They are hard to clean and you need to remove the ink cartridge to clean this kind of clog.
- Hard-line Clogs: Hardline clogs are the most extreme ones. Derbies, small junks, dust, inks mix up to cause these kinds of clogs.
Out of these 3 types of clogs only the straight clogs can be removed with the help of your printer’s automatic printhead cleaning tool. To clean the printhead automatically.
How To Clean Inkjet Printer Heads Automatically
You can clean your inkjet printer head in 2 ways.
- By using a printer’s built-in maintenance tool.
- With the help of a Windows or MAC PC
To use the printer’s built-in tool for cleaning the printhead
- First, select the Menu from your inkjet printer screen.
- Now find the Printer Maintenance menu and tap on it.
- Lastly, select printhead clean and proceed.
Most of the modern printers come with this built-in printhead cleaning tool. But the procedure of using this tool might be different for different brands and models. So, if you don’t find the printer maintenance option by following the above steps, please look at your printer manuals or contact the service center.
However, older printer models and some entry-level printers do not come with this built-in feature. So, you need to use a MAC or Windows device.
For cleaning your inkjet printhead with the help of a Windows device
- Firstly, your printer must be on the same network or connected with the Windows device via cable.
- Now go to the search bar type Control Panel and press enter.
- Inside the control panel, you will find a menu named Devices and Printers.
- Click and enter Devices and Printers.
- Now you will find all the devices connected to your Windows PC.
- Select your printer from there and right-click on it.
- After that go to Properties>Hardwire.
- From hardwire select Clean Ink Cartridges and proceed.
Now your printer will automatically clean itself.
For MAC devices
- First, open the Apple Menu and select System Preferences.
- From System Preferences find Printer and Scanner then click on it.
- Now select your printer and right-click on it.
- Then go to Options & Supplies>Utility>Open Printer Utility> Cleaning.
- Lastly, select deep cleaning and hit ok.
However, you need to keep in mind that only simple or straight clogs can be removed with the help of automatic cleaning.
Moreover, for automatic cleaning, your printer will raise the temperature and run inks from the printhead several times. So, running this process several times can cost you 10-25% ink of your ink cartridge.
After running the automatic cleaning tool, print a paper to find out if the issues are gone or not. If it’s gone then congratulations. Otherwise, you need to manually clean the printhead.
How To Clean Printer Heads Manually
Chesty and hardline clogs are caused by dried ink, small junk, dust, or debris. So, there is no way of cleaning them automatically. So, How to clean dried ink from printer?
Well. you need to dive deep and do it manually. So for cleaning chesty clogs or dried inks from your inkjet printer head
- First, turn off your printer and remove its plug from the power socket.
- Secondly, open your printer’s casing and your printhead will be visible.
- Now with the help of your printer’s user manual, remove the ink cartridges from the printer.
- After that, remove the printhead. You can follow this video Removing Canon Printhead for removing the printhead.
- Then soak a thin towel with a good cleaning agent and water mixture.
- Lastly, put your printhead on the towel and rub it with the towel until the dried inks get removed.
By following the above steps you can easily remove chesty clogs or dried inks from your inkjet printhead.
However, the printhead removal process might vary from printer to printer. So, read the user manual or contact customer support before removing your printhead.
After following the above methods, dry your printer’s printhead, set it up, and print one or two pages. This will show if the issue is gone or not.
If it’s not solved yet then your printer is suffering from the hardline clog. To solve this clog
- Follow the above-mentioned methods to remove the ink cartridge and printhead from your printer.
- Then you need to make a cleaning solution using isopropyl alcohol and water. The water and isopropyl alcohol mixture ratio must be 1:1.
- After that put your printer’s printhead in the mixture for 2 minutes max.
- Lastly, put the soaked printhead on tissue paper or a towel to clean the moisture properly.
No matter how extreme the clog is, the above methods should clean your inkjet printer head. However, if you take proper steps then you can even prevent clogging from ever happening.
How To Prevent Printer Head Clogging
- Never keep your inkjet Printer idle. At least print 2-3 times per week.
- Don’t put your inkjet printer in a dusty place.
- Clean your printhead manually at least once a month.
- Run automatic cleaning 2 times a month.
- Print thick papers every now or then. This will remove the excess ink from your printhead.
- Lastly, try to use the original ink. This might cost more but they cause fewer clogs.
If you follow the above methods on a regular basis then you might never face clogging again.
Final Words
I hope our tutorial on How To Clean Inkjet Printer Heads will help you clean your inkjet printer head and prevent it from clogging again.
If you have any questions, let us know in the comments.
That’s all for today. Have a great day!
