How Do I Clean My Canon Printer ?

[tamaris]

I have been advised to do this as colour pictures are not good ?

[00Lisa00]

If you look in the properties (right click the printer icon) within here you should see a menu about cleaning... It is as simple as folding a piece of paper and pressing a button ...if you let us know what model you have it may get a more in depth answer....

[tamaris]

It is a Canon MP220 thank you

[Wak]

I don't know this particular model but if it uses two cartridges (one black and one colour) then the following may be of help to you.
All cleaning programs built within printers use a hell of a lot of ink from all cartridges whether they need cleaning or not.
I suggest that you make a small .Doc file having four lines of capital letters (a line of black, then yellow, then red and then blue.)
Print this .doc file out and see which colour of ink is printing with pale or white lines running through it. Assuming that there is only one colour not printing correctly then this is the colour which needs cleaning.
Stand the cartridge with it's print head in a saucer of hot (not boiling) water and leave until cool and then dab the print head with a damp paper tissue.
Now print out a half A4 page of capital letters in the colour which showed with pale streaks running through it. If it still shows the faulty stripes running through it then repeat with the saucer as necessary.
If the cartridge has been used for some time with the faulty stripes showing then it is possible that the heater within the faulty nozzle has burnt out due to the fact that the ink was unable to stop the heater in that nozzle from overheating. If this is the case then I doubt if this nozzle will ever work properly again and a new cartridge will be required.
This is why a faulty cartridge should be refilled or cleaned as soon as it is found to be faulty.
The Canon printer that I used to have had a 1/2" thick absorbent carpet covering all the bottom of the printer and all ink from the built-in cleaning program used to end up in this carpet. One day my Canon was left standing on it's side for some reason and all the ink in the aforementioned carpet ran out all over the place, so keep this fact in mind and beware of the ink eventually leaking out.
Hope this helps.

[tamaris]

Wak I would not know how to do that.
All I know is that when I print something it usually uses the colours it needs

[Wak]

Hi Tamaris, the .Doc file I mentioned is simply a text file which you type into the printer using MS. Word or whatever you write your letters and documents with and, by printing it out, using coloured text (capital letters), you will be able to see from the coloured text which colour has pale or white streaks running through it.
The instruction book which you got with the printer should tell you about the cartridges and how to take them out of the printer.
Once they a

[Wak]

Sorry about the above mistake.

Hi Tamaris, the .Doc file I mentioned is simply a text file which you type into the printer using MS. Word or whatever you write your letters and documents with and, by printing it out, using coloured text (capital letters) of each colour (B, Y, R & BLUE) you will be able to see from the coloured text which colour has pale or white streaks running through it.
The instruction book which you got with the printer should tell you about the cartridges and how to take them out of the printer.
Once they are out of the printer (I assume you will have one Black cartridge and one Colour cartridge) stand the faulty cartridge in the saucer of hot water as mentioned above with the inky nozzle bit in the water.
You should now be able to follow the rest of the instructions in my first reply in order to clean the cartridge and get it printing properly again.
The bit about the ink absorbing carpet in the base of the printer was added as a point of interest about Canon printers and can be ignored for now.

[tamaris]

Hey Wak thank you but I am not technology minded and I have no one to help, so no idea, but thanks for trying to help.

[Wak]

Shame, If you lived close I'd pop round to help you.
Maybe you should look at Lisa's earlier reply again.
Best of luck.

[00Lisa00]

click the Start button (bottom left on the task bar)
click on Devices and Printers ..you printer should show up as an icon and may have the word Default under it or a green tick...
Right click on your printer and click Printing preferences
a new window will open..
along the tabs click on Maintenance
In here will be how to clean your printer
I would suggest you do each clean they suggest
as in Clean, deep clean, back plate clean and roller cleaning




Lisa x

[tamaris]

Thank you Lisa, and thank you Wak, how kind you are x