Owners of laser toner and inkjet printers already
How to Clean the Nozzle of a Printer Cartridge Manually and Remotely
To protect the chips, the software design and hardware architecture of HP printers have already integrated this automated cleaning function. With a few clicks of the mouse, users instruct the printer to run those nozzle tests. In the meantime, the quick and precise movement of the print head over paper forces out the solidified particles that clogged the nozzle.
In truth, a manual cleaning of an HP ink cartridge takes only three simple steps:
Use the pointed tip of a sewing or knitting needle to dislodge the solid particles blocking the head's nozzles. Don't stab the hole too much or too often; rather, gently scrape away those bits of dried ink.
Get a glass dropper that chemists often use in the lab. Its body narrows down at the end, which has a tiny opening. Take a small amount of alcohol or acetone into the dropper's opening. Incidentally, either of these liquids is a mild solvent that won't harm the plastic and aluminum parts of a toner or cartridge. However, you must be careful in applying these to parts made of rubber, which dries up and becomes brittle from alcohol absorption.
Next, slowly squeeze the dropper's head. Allow tiny amounts of the solvent to enter the nozzle. Two to three drops through the cartridge's opening seems enough to dissolve the hardened mix of leaky ink, machine oil, and dust particles. Wait up to twenty minutes before re-installing the cartridge and running a few printing tests.
Afterwards, check whether or not ink flows freely from the printer cartridge; run a few printing tests to make sure. Blotting is good sign that the nozzle has been unclogged; your machine is now ready for printing jobs. However, when you see white flecks or lines (streaking) or notice the colors looked faded and watery (bleeding), you'll have to clean the cartridges manually.
How Jet Printers Work With Multi-Color Ink Cartridges
Ordinary ink tanks for laser and bubble jet printers come in a standard group of BCMY (Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow) cartridges. This ink delivery system consists of four tanks separately connected to the printer through four tiny tubes. Then, these tubes connect to the print head with four nozzles. While printing, the printer releases the right mix of colors depending on the shade and intensity of hues per square inch of the page. If there were more greens than reds or blacks, then the Cyan and Yellow tanks empty their contents faster than the other two.
On one hand, an HP compatible toner or its genuine counterpart only comes in monochrome (either Black or one of the standard colors). With its distinctive packaging and higher prices, the genuine toners for Hewlett-Packard laser printers have a smaller yield than any HP compatible toner. This small number indicates that HP printers have been programmed to consume greater amounts of ink from genuine products. Most probably, the company prefers to strongly associate the consumer benefit of 'high quality output' with their genuine ink cartridges.
