How often should I clean my print cartridges?

Question

Will overcleaning my print cartridges cause them to print even worse? How often can I clean my print cartridges? A lot of the time my printer only prints half of the lines. Is this because I don't clean it enough?

Answer 1

No, overcleaning the cartridges will not make them print worse or spoilt them. However, cleaning them when you do not need to causes you to waste ink. Most printers use a little ink from the cartridges to clean the printheads, so the more you clean, the more ink is wasted in the cleaning instead of being used for printing.

You should, however, clean the cartridges when you see print defects, eg. streaks, lines missing, etc. What I mean by cleaning is using the printer toolbox in your computer to clean and not a physical cleaning. You should not take out the cartridges and wipe them, etc because you can damage the cartridges then.

After each clean, your print defects should disappear or the printouts should become better. If not, then it could just be that the cartridges are empty and you need to buy new ones. That would also result in your printer not printing properly.

Answer 2

The computer normally has software that tells you whether or not the catridges are clean or dirty.
I don't clean them - my dad does (it is VERY messy)!!

Maybe you should change your cartridge if your printer isn't printing properly - I'm not sure. Give it a knock. Thats what we did when it was printing a little funny and it worked. Sometimes the cartridge isn't exactly in place. It may be becauyse they're dirty - I don't know.

Answer 3

About every two years.