Obi's Inkjet Printer Cleaning Masterclass (or how to kill a dull afternoon by looking like your busy, while saving the boss money!)
I've had some good success cleaning blocked jets on Epsons and Canons. Unlike HP the head doesn't get replaced every time you replace the ink. If the auto head cleaning process fails (which wastes loads of ink anyhow, on purpose? of course!) Get some cleaning fluid, anything that is quite thin and will evaporate way. Lighter fluid evap's too quickly, nothing too gloopy that will make things worse. I find windolene type non-smear glass cleaner (green or clear trigger spray bottle) best. Now set up a doc that makes the head move across the paper lots, but doesn't actually print much or anything. For example, a hairline border around a page will keep the printing head busy for a while. Just before the page gets pulled through the printer, spray a bit of fluid on the page. This is the key bit. The first time just do a little and see what happens. You need enough to get some on the print head, but not enough to turn the paper into mulch as this will jam up and probably knacker the printer for good!
If you get it right, you should see lots of nice dirty streaks across the page where the head is wiped across the page.
Doing alternate pages like this and nozzle tests should bring some if not all your nozzles back to life.
With this method I brought a printer back to life which had 80% of its nozzles blocked, and I got all but 2 working. Took about 10 cleaning sheets mind, and most of an afternoon of my old dull job . Quite satisfying when it works.
