How do you clean print heads in ink jet printers?

[Frank Angel]

We have all been there -- HP or Brother or Epson inkjet printers capable of producing very impressive color images that work fine for awhile, but then just start spitting out terribly bad images or totally blank pages altogether -- my current Brother MFC-495CW is spitting out blanks. And of course it's because of a clogged print head...clogged badly enough that the built in "cleaning" routine does nothing. Now that cleaning run can only use the ink itself to try to dissolve dried ink in the "jets" and ink, while they may have spiked it with bit of chemical detergent, in my experience, once that head is clogged, whatever is in the good ink in the cartridge isn't strong enough to clean the head well enough to get it back to acceptable functionality.

So....my question is two fold: 1) does anyone know what one could use that will dissolve dried ink? And 2) if there is such a chemical (alcohol, naphtha, WD-40, whatever) that will do a job on dried ink, wouldn't it make sense to not only try to clean the head from the outside, but filling the cartridge with that solvent and letting the cleaning routine of the printer itself use the solution to clean the clog from the inside as well. I just find it crazy maddening that so many printers just die because of clogged ink jets. Now some designs do have the heads attached to the ink cartridge itself, which is a really smart idea, but evidently that can only be done with large cartridges but not with designs that use smaller multiple color cartridges because they are not wide enough to put the head on the smaller cartridges (or so I am told). I was also admonished that it was my fault that the printer is dead because I neglected to run the cleaning routine every month and neglected to print a page once a week. In my defense, I've never read in any manual that anyone is supposed to do either of those things, although it does seem intuitive.

Anyway, I have this fairly expensive all-in-one Brother printer that is pretty much worthless as a printer (it probably can still scan, but that wasn't its primary function), and I am loath to throw it in the trash just for want of a small print head. So if anyone knows of a solvent that actually does dissolve dried printer ink, I am willing to inject it into an ink cartridge and make the printer run its cleaning routine with that stuff. I'll do that before I junk it. And let me say, if I were King, all printers would have print heads as easily replaceable as the cartridges, given that they are as much a consumable.

Hoping someone has had some luck resolving this dilemma.

[Dave Macaulay]

Not sure what solvent is in the ink, but trying a few on a printed page would tell a lot. The more the print dissolves, the better the solvent... but I would use the "nicest" solvent that shows some dissolution. Acetone or MEK may dissolve some plastic in the printhead and destroy it. Pure isopropyl is safe for almost all plastics.

[Leo Enticknap]

I've had very good luck with a printhead cleaning kit such as this one, for my HP Officejet 8600. You remove the printhead from the printer completely, fill the syringe with the liquid, then attach the little hose that comes with the syringe to the intake valve (the thing that mates with the cartridge) for the yellow, cyan, magenta and black channels in turn. Push the liquid through until clear liquid drips out of the bottom of the head, wait 2-3 minutes, then push some more liquid through to get the last bits of residue out.

The good news - it works. The usage pattern for our printer is guaranteed to make it clog up - nothing for three months, then we want to print a stack of photos. Using these kits has always restored the print quality to pretty much what we got when the thing was brand new.

The bad news - the process is spectacularly messy. I would suggest doing it outdoors, in the back yard, on a tray, and wear protective clothing, like a plastic apron and gloves. You will spray inky liquid all over the place.

As for what is in the liquid they give you, I don't know, and the bottle (I tend to use the "Printhead Hospital" brand when buying new liquid, because I've always had good results with it) doesn't say. It has a slight greenish tinge, and smells a bit like dishwasher rinse aid. I can't smell any alcohol in it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Printers, our all-time favorite...

I've not yet cleaned a separate printer head, but in the days when it was common to only have printer cartridges with he head included, I've often used a cotton swab with just water. In many cases that got the head unclogged as the ink is usually water-based and therefore also soluble in water.

[Leo Enticknap]

Interesting - I never had much success in cleaning the cartridges with integral printheads. Hairs from a Q-tip (UK - cotton bud) would get stuck in the gunked up ink, impurities in the water would block the heads (the last time I tried this was when I was living in the UK, where distilled water was very hard to get hold of; unlike here in California, where every supermarket sells it), and generally, it was much easier to remember to print at least one or two sheets a week than to mess around trying to clean the cartridges.

The first time my Officejet gunked up, I investigated replacing the entire printhead, but discovered that they cost $150. Given that replacing the entire printer with a comparable model was only in the ballpark of $200, that didn't seem sensible. So I tried one of the syringe kits on the basis that I was only gambling $15, and was prepared to do that. As I say, it worked very well, but the procedure is extremely messy. I'm guessing that its effectiveness due to (a) the liquid being specifically formulated not to damage the head, (b) pumping it through the entire ink path removes gunk and impurities far more effectively than just wiping one end of it, and (c) you're not actually touching the really fragile part of the head that contacts the paper, so no damage risk there either.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Well, we're talking ThinkJet here, like the models without a number. Those ugly, bulky boxes. Using distilled water is probably a better choice, but I just used normal water. For me, it worked pretty well. The first two or three pages obviously had issues, but afterwards it would print fine. Now keep in mind that back in those days, those print-heads didn't even clean themselves and the maximum resolution you could get out of them was more like 300 dpi. Nowadays, we're talking about resolutions of four or eight times that, so those nozzles are far smaller. It was also back in the days where the printer was more expensive than the ink.

In hindsight, I should've added a warning: I don't advice to clean a modern print head using a cotton swab, because of the reasons Leo indicated. (Maybe the hairs of those swabs are too wide to penetrate the tiny ink-channels, so the danger is limited, but I don't know that for sure.)

I moved to almost exclusively laser printers ever since. Although they have the same shenanigans going on with toners that are empty while obviously being half full, photo-conductors that magically stop working after a round number of prints, I've found their operation to be more consistent and economical across the board. The only thing they pretty much suck at, is printing photos. Nothing beats a high-end inkjet on that aspect.