Care and Feeding of Inkjet Cartridges
With the high speed machinery, and less than ideal conditions of a mailroom for keeping hair thin nozzles clean and functioning, it takes a little extra care to make sure that your cartridges perform at or above expectations for your customer.
With that in mind, we offer some suggestions below for the care and feeding of your inkjet cartridges, provided by some of our clients.
- For best results, do not remove the tape seal until cartridge is ready to be used. If the cartridge is opened and the tape is removed and it just sits, this may cause the ink to dry, harden and block off the nozzle.
- After the cartridge has been opened, especially cartridges that dry out quickly, store them in the upright position in a Ziploc bag along with a lightly dampened sponge or paper towel.
- For Fast Drying ink cartridges, make sure to store them upright between uses. The pressure of gravity keeps the nozzles full that way, and they don’t dry out as quickly.
- If the nozzles have clogged, you can sometimes restore functionality by running them under warm water, or using a q-tip with warm water, and then shaking vigorously (be careful where you shake). Then hold the cartridge gently on a paper towel (DO NOT wipe) and the ink will start to siphon out. Repeat as needed.
- Air ingestion is caused from shaking, dropping, or otherwise agitating the cartridge while the nozzles are uncapped. Doing so can force air into the nozzles and cause the cartridges to stop printing.
- If the printer does not recognize the cartridge, use a pencil eraser and wipe the circuit side (NOT the ink tip) of the cartridge. Sometimes there is a connection problem and this may resolve that.
- Cartridges should only be inserted into the printer pen stall far enough for the pen stall latch to catch the corner of the cartridge. User should allow the latch to make the electrical connection between cartridge and printer. If the cartridges are being forced into their stalls, they run the risk of scraping or cutting the flex on the printers electrical pins
If you have other helpful tips, please forward them to us via email at info@ink4mail.com and we will post them to the site.