How to Ink Flushing or Simple Maintenance on the Ink Based Printer

HOW TO INK FLUSHING OR SIMPLE MAINTENANCE ON THE INK BASED PRINTER

INK FLUSHING / HEAD CLEANING / PRINTER MAINTENANCE

 

Have you ever experienced a problem on your printer like the color on the printout looks like stripes and even the colors aren’t printed on the paper? Few days ago, my printer (Epson L3110) had a little problem, which is not being able to print yellow and red color. If you frequently use the printer, maybe you’ve had a slightly similar problem like that.

Actually, this is one of the common problems of the ink-based printer. I’ve had that problem before and it’s solved with a simple maintenance. So, with my simple experience, I will share simple tips to fix a problem in ink-based printer. Also related to maintain other Epson printers or other ink-based printers.

The problem that happened to me was caused by no ink-flow reaching the cartridge nozzles. It can be seen from the printouts that look like dotted lines or no color is printed entirely. But, there are several causes that related to this problem includes:

·      The remaining ink in the ink-tank is below the minimum level.

The remaining ink in the tank is not strong enough to drain through the ink-rubber tube. So, you just need to refill the ink in the ink-tank manually.

·      The inks have dried in the ink-rubber tube, nozzles, or cartridge

It happened because the printer hasn’t been used for a long time (more than 2 months). This problem is quite serious, because the ink becomes thick and sticky on the surface of those parts if the ink doesn’t flow for a long time. So, some parts such as ink-rubber tube, nozzles, and other ink-paths must be celaned manually.

·      An error response occurred on the printer to drain the ink into the cartridge nozzle.

But, in some printers, it’s programmed automatically to prevent the ink from thickening in the nozzle, cartridge, or ink-rubber tube. This problem can be solved easily by ink-flushing or head-cleaning from maintenance settings option on the laptop/PC.

Before head cleaning or ink flushing process, make sure that the printer is still used in the last 2 months and also make sure the remaining ink in the ink-tank is above the lowest level. The last head cleaning or ink flushing process I did was in September 2022 and it worked. Head cleaning or Ink flushing steps include :

·      First step, turn on and connect the printer with Laptop / PC

·      Open “Control Panel” (Windows) > find Hardware and Sound, left click on “View Devices and Printers”

 

·      Find your printer device by name and icon > left click on that icon > left click on “See What’s Printing”

 

·      Left click on “Printers” menu > left click on “Printing Preferences” > left click on “Maintenance”

·      The icons on the left side are commonly used for printer maintenance. For ink flushing purposes, the best choices are head cleaning, power cleaning, or both.

 

Head cleaning and Power cleaning option have almost the similar function. Both options will force the ink from the ink-tank to drain through the ink-rubber tube to the cartridge nozzle. The differences between them are that on “Power Cleaning”, it requires more ink, takes longer to process due to deep cleaning, and it takes about 5-12 hours of rest before being used for print test. And also you have to do “Head Cleaning” before doing “Power Cleaning” process.

You can try our simple tutorial and we hope that your printer problem can be solved easily. Have a nice day. Thankyou.