Printer head cleaning

[Me__2001]

i've finally gotten round to taking the head out of my printer (canon i865) to see why its been leaving bands and not using the magenta when printing pictures, well it appears to have a nice deposit of gunk and dried ink on it so obviously its gonna need cleaning

i've seen the cartriges that you can buy and cant be bothered with one of those as its around the head as well as on it

popping it in a bath of isopropyl alchohol seems to be the thing to do in every guide i've read, does that sound ok? i dont really wanna screw it up as it wasn't exactly a cheap investment

i'm gonna pick some up from my local boots tomorrow and give it a clean, i've also got some lint free cloths that i use for cleaning CPU's which i'm assuming will be safe to use on it?

 

[Abarbarian]

Those materials will do just fine . Don't know about the dropping it in a bath of isoalcohol but swabbing it and giving tha alcohohl time to soften the deposits before swabbing again till clean will do no harm I recon .

 

[Me__2001]

ok i have a problem, i went down to boots on friday thinking that i'd pick up some rubbing alcohol but all they had was acetone which isn't quite what i wanted and iirc is a bit agressive to plastics

so anyone know of a decent place that i can get some?

 

[Ian]

Maplins should have some IPA in - comes in a spray can and is safe on plastic

 

[Me__2001]

ahh that sounds good ian, i'll order some now

 

[Abarbarian]

I don't know how much the Maplins stuff in a spray can is but its not very good for the enviroment . You can get half a litre here , enough to last a lifetime . Mind you you could always order one for every project and drink the remainder to celebrate a sucsessful completion .

 

[Me__2001]

i reckon that'll do, ordered an air duster whilst i was at it as i need to give my system a more thorough clean

 

[Me__2001]

everything turned up bout an hour ago and i've proceeded to remove the head and the little pad that cleans it from the printer gave them a good soak then blasted them to make sure i'd got all the ****e out of it, all the colours were running out of the head fine so i stuck it back in and i've printed a picture which looks spot on but when i do a solid block of pink its not quite right

as the head passes over the page it prints fine, gets half way across the block and then begins to fade and it does this on every pass no matter what the width of the block is?!

as a side, gloves would probably have been a good idea, my hands are covered in ink and the damn stuff dont seem to come off with the IPA or soap

 

[floppybootstomp]

Can't help with the problem, except for maybe suggesting to try a fresh tri-colour cartridge and trying the printer's software cleaning program/alignment, but on the subject of isopropyl alcohol Boots won't supply it you'll need to go to an independent pharmacist and you'll have to ask for it, it won't be on display.

It's not exactly cheap either, I was charged a fiver for half a litre.

Excellent cleaning solution though

As an aside, if you look like a dosser or a mether, they won't serve you, honestly

 

[Me__2001]

it actually has seperate inks which are pretty much new as they were replaced when i noticed the problem but i've only just got round to cleaning it all

i got a 400ml aerosol for £6 which is pretty useful tbh but yeah its not cheap

 

[Ian]

Does it cause problems with printing blocks of any colour, or just pink? Seems strange doesn't it!