I have an old (ca. 1998?) cheap color ink jet printer, brand rhymes with “Mepson.” Trouble: dried ink and mung on the printhead, ink nozzles, etc. It’s apparently just a hazard of these things as a species. You know, these things should just come with a note in the documentation that explains “If you don’t use this thing at least twice a week your quality of life will quickly decrease.” So of course I leave town for Europe and don’t use the thing for a year and a half. Decide to print out some PDFs, dig it out of the closet and fire it up and. . . NOTHING. I mean, the thing seemed to be working but not a speck of ink on the paper. Virginal white sheets, just like. . . never mind. That metaphor was headed somewhere unsavory.
On cursory Googling I learn that this is probably clogged nozzles and if the machine’s cleaning cycle can’t fix it, it’s hopelessly munged up and cheaper to buy a new printer than to replace this bit of the unit. NOooooo, I think. I just hate the idea of replacing something that ALMOST works-- environmentally EEvil. So I go on a deeper Googling campaign and learn that A) there are some desperate measures one can take and B) some companies sell things for certain problems and want you to buy their kits and will suggest that PROBABLY the problem you have is the one their kit fixes (which uses a ‘special solution’ (i.e. glass-cleaner, I’m sure, although these companies’ sites explain that using windex, alcohol or anything other than their proprietary goo will ruin things) in a special spot (injected into the ink-feed side of the nozzles)).
I wound up doing everything I could (EXCEPT for the fancy kit thing)-- cleaned off the inkhead underside with cotton swabs and paper towel bits doused in glass-cleaner, doused the resting-mat in glass-cleaner, too, and the rubber widget that “cleans” the nozzles normally (provided it’s also not covered in mung, too) and. . . I got a spotty blue line! Hooray! After a bit more cleaning and letting it do its nozzle-cleaning cycle a couple more times I have text! Yay! It’s as good as it ever was.*
Sorry, but this makes me feel like a super-hero. It CAN be done.
- It was never very good, but I just use it for drafts.