Lending Your Printer Cartridges Longer Life
We are all aware that ink cartridges don’t come cheaply. This is one of the biggest surprises of the printing industy, when you get a great deal on a super printer and then get your first look at how much the ink cartridges are going to cost! Thankfully, you now have the option of buying refilled cartridges, which were empty and turned in, then refilled and sold at a discount. These cartridges will be equally effective in producing quality prints and will have a much lower cost. Even then, you need to ensure that you care for your ink cartridges to the point where you’ve maximized their lifespan.
Generally, people don’t realize that ink cartridges have to be treated well to continue performing at maximum potential. They often believe that a cartridge is designed to go until it is empty. This isn’t false, but if you just follow a couple simple steps, you can probably coax more ink out. First of all, make sure that you never touch the copper plate that is on the head of the ink cartridge. Because static electricity could damage the ink cartridge head, the copper plates should come covered in a little piece of protective plastic. This will ruin your cartridge for sure.
Another best-practices tip is to keep a heads-up watch on the prints that are coming out. If you begin getting blurry points or lines on your prints, it’s time to clean the ink cartridge head. Generally, printers will have a cleaning function for fixing just this problem. Run the cartridge through the cleaning option and see if the blurriness has disappeared. To clean it entirely may require two or three runs of the clean cycle.
One reservoir of ink will likely run out before the others when you use a tricolor cartridge. This is a heads-up for you to tell you that the ink cartridge is getting low on ink. You’ll be able to tell this is happening because you’ll still be able to get some color out of the cartridge, but the colors will seem distorted or off in some way. Don’t continue to use the cartridge after a line has run out. It’s essential that you don’t allow an ink cartridge to run totally dry on ink. It seems to make sense and you might want to try, but if you try to squeeze those last drops out of the cartridge, bad things may happen. The circuit head of the printer cartridge can burn if it continues to print when there is no ink, and this can cause overheating and serious damage in your printer.
Be sure to follow all instructional materials on or with the ink cartridge because many of them have different rules and protocols for installation. Also never leave the ink cartridge where it will be heated, like in a parked car, because the ink will expand and explode. If you take good care of your cartridge, you’ll find that it will last you for a fairly long amount of time.
For more great information about laser toner, ink cartridges, and the technology that goes into using and working with them, check out the Ink Cartridge Blog. It’s full of good information about technology and printer news, like ink refills for printers.
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