Epson Canon

Most Epson and Canon ink jet printers have built-in print heads. This is to say they are separate from the ink cartridge. Some are removable and serviceable and some are not. When you buy a new ink cartridge for these printers, you will not be replacing the print head. This is a very, very important thing to know.

Print heads in ink jet printers use hundreds of microscopic "nozzles" to squirt ink. If these nozzle plug up, no ink will pass and your printer will quit working. Now the bad part. All print heads eventually plug up. The combination of quick drying ink (it dries fast enough that you can handle the copy as it comes out of the printer) and the microscopic size of the nozzles combine to remove thousands of printers from service every day. Like your arteries, the nozzles are slowly decreasing in size as they plug up. You will not likely notice it happening until you see streaks.

The only salvation you have to this condition is to run your print head cleaning utility. If you go to your printer in the control panel you will find a maintenance tab that has various utilities to align and clean your print heads. Cleaning your print heads wastes ink. But it will keep you from having to replace your printer due to plugged nozzles.

The most critical time in your printer's life is when you change cartridges. If you have run the cartridge totally out of ink, the the print head is dry or nearly dry and any ink in the plumbing and nozzles can harden up there. Once your new ink cartridges are installed, the ink may not be able to get through to the nozzles and suddenly you are out of business.

Often when this happens the user may reason that the new cartridge caused the malfunction. They feel that the printer was working properly when the ink ran low and printed copy started looking streaky. In fact, the print head was plugging up and a new cartridge will not revive the system.

Some printer systems have removable/replacable print heads. If your printer does not have a removable print head your options are few. Some service centers will disassemble the unit and replace the print head but spending $50-$75 on a $80 printer makes little sense.

For more information about this topic and some advice on how to unclog fixed print heads type "Epson print head" into your browser