How to prevent an inket printer from clogging up from lack of use?

Question

I tend to print, at most, 5 pages per month: usually 2-3 black and white pages, and 1-2 color pages.

In the past 3 years, I've gone through 4 inkjet printers because they all clog so fast. I've tried several different models of HP (Hewlett Packard) and EPSON all-in-one devices (printers with flatbed and sheet-fed scanners).

Is there any way to keep inkjet printers from quickly clogging?

I would prefer not to have to remember to print a couple color pages every few days (and then immediately recycle the wasted pages), switch to a laser printer, drive to a store to pick up prints, or wait for prints to arrive in the mail.

Answer 1

The best remedy for clogging is to perform periodic maintenance by taking your vehicle out on the road to clean out the cobwebs every once in a while.

Note: I have a supply of shopping list paper (pre-printed) as a side benefit to this practice.

Give some thought to the test page. It should have some of each of the 4 colour inks, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. You do not have to print a lot so much as you print a bit from each ink jet nozzle regularly. A line of text with a few words in each colour should be enough to do the job.

Save the document as a file and print the "print-head maintenance file" weekly. Think of it as maintenance.

Planet savers can reuse the same piece of paper a few times if the printed strip is positioned near the end of a sheet. Then, put the scrap sheet on top of the paper supply to print the ink strip … top, bottom, front, back, etc. You don't care what it looks like.

Good luck.

Answer 2

I fought this same battle for years. In the end the cheapest and easiest solution was to change to a 'monochrome laser all-in-one'

I tossed out much more money in dried up ink over the years, then the cost of replacing the machine with a laser printer.

So now I only print black and white, and I am still using the toner that came with the machine 2 or 3 years ago.

Yes there are a few things that I might want to print in color. But I am happy to be able to print them in black and white, and be able to print them when I want without having to worry about dried up ink! If I really need it in color, there are both family and commercial options for getting color prints.

So far I have not found anything that really needed color.

Answer 3

It is usually recommended to leave a printer switched on. It probably won't consume much power. But the idea is that it periodically cleans the ink jet nozzles automatically.

Replacing the ink head can be more expensive than buying a new printer, but cheap printers are a loss leader recovered by selling expensive ink, and it will use ink even when you are not printing.

But that is not a Life Hack – that's just RTM.

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If you print about 5 pages a month, my Life Hack is:

• Use a High Street stationer with a printing service.

Take the file on a memory stick, and ask

Print 3 copies of letter.docx please.

But, don't forget to take the memory stick away with the hard copy!