Using your photo printer to the fullest does not require expensive equipment. This is a step-by-step guide for those who want to calibrate his photo printer at home.

Ink + paper = something unexpected

You should know that ink is either a solution of coloring agents or a water suspense of solid color particles. And paper is some porous surface with certain roughness, own whiteness, thickness and reflecting power.

So when ink meets paper, rarely something good comes out of it (especially when they are made by different brands) under default printing settings: the results of this interaction are often hard to predict. Bu there’s something you can do about it.

(more…)

Submit to:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Surely you have faced this problem: one fine day the printer stops printing and starts flashing with its LEDs. You know that something went wrong but don’t know what it is.

The thing is when broken, printer can’t TELL you happened (I imagine it would be breathing like Darth Vader or speaking in Optimus Prime’s voice,) but it can give you a sign. It is the you who should understand that signs (as a higher developed species.) At least, it’s in your interest to do so.

So let’s learn some printer signals language. (more…)

Submit to:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Usually printer ink manufacturers say an ink or toner cartridge is enough to print this or that amount of pages. Little is known of how actually this number is defined. Yes, we know that they use a 5% coverage page and print continuously until a cartridge (or several cartridges – to get consistent result) is empty. But that doesn’t have much to do with real life printing.

Unfortunately, you can’t know beforehand how many pages a cartridge will print, but you are fortunate to know there is a good way to count the pages that has been printed. (Name your own reason why would want to do that.)

Good thing is this way of counting printed pages does not require any additional software (though there is some,) except for Windows XP installed. Bad thing is you won’t get specific, detailed information like page size, printing quality mode, color and other settings.

Let’s start our way to get the printed pages counted. (more…)

Submit to:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

The chances are, you, just like me, have an inkjet printer at home. The chances are you use the printer occasionally to print several pages of text or a bunch of photos. The chances are next time you going to use the printer, it won’t work for the printhead are clogged.

Of course, the best way to get rid of clogged jets is to prevent them. Some say you should print regularly (daily/weekly or else), some would advise you to get a laser printer instead. But when you’ve already got this problem, how to troubleshoot the cloged printer?

There is a way to bring your inkjet printer back to life.

The essence of problem with clogged printhead is that ink dries inside the printhead jets, letting no liquid ink from cartridge tank to go out. Given that, the essence of unclogging a printhead lies in dissolving that dried ink.

There are arguments about what is the best solvent to clean inkjet heads. People naming this or that solvent are both right and wrong. The thing is there no best solvent, there is one that dissolves the particular type of ink.

Understanding printer ink

Before we start, there is something to know about printer inks. In one of previous posts I cited one good article titled “Debunking the Myths of Digital Inks” by Tony Martin. If somehow you have not read the article yet, I will brief you on it.

In general, in any printer using water based inks, whether they are dye, pigment or hybrid colorants, they tend to have similar formulations.

They use mainly water, a colorant or mixture of colorants, dye, or pigment or both, a wetting agent like glycerin that allows the liquid to flow and allow the ink to enter the paper surface, a product to slow down drying on the heads like glycol, and often an alcohol to speed drying on the paper surface. Some inks with pigments require an adhesive to attach the particles to the paper surface, so they use a resin, usually acrylic.

This all gives us the idea of what reagents to use for dissolution (at least I strongly hope it does.)

Selecting a solvent

How would one know what exact solvent is suitable for his or her case? That’s pretty easy to figure out.

Usually there’s decent amounts of ink spilled everywhere in these situations. Instead of risking your potentially expensive heads, try your various solvents on dried ink outside of printing head. If you don’t already have spills to clean up, then intentionally make one. Let it dry and then clean it up… with “whatever” you’re contemplating running through the printer.

If it doesn’t work outside the printer, neither will it unclog the head from inside. If it dissolves the ink, then you have a much better chance of success.

A troubleshooting advice

To help you dissolve dried ink in printhead, here is a receipt that should work on the majority of water based inkjet printer inks.

The mixture uses either ammoniated window cleaner (which uses glycol, alcohol, water and ammonia) with extra isopropyl alcohol, or in places where ammoniated window cleaner isn’t available, use ammonia mixed to about 1% concentration, and adding the isopropyl.

However, there are some inks that use different technologies and may not work with these solvents.

Submit to:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

To continue the subject of connecting a printer to several computers, it’s worth to notice there may be another type of connection – wireless.

Let’s suppose you have a wireless network running in your home or office and you need to get a new printer up and running.

One way to do so is to connect the printer through a cable to one of computers and share the printer over the network. Don’t forget to install the printer drivers on the computers.

Alternatively, you can go completely without cables and connect the printer wirelessly. The way is more suitable in a space-sensitive room, and you are not dependant on the spare place on the table. Besides, you can put the printer in a place more convenient for people to reach.

To connect printer wirelessly you will need what is called print server. It’s a gadget that plugs into printer’s interface port. Again, the print server can be of two types—USB and parallel:

As a dedicated device, print server requires drives to be installed and configured. The actual settings may vary and depend on the device model.

Submit to:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Many people now have two or more computers at home and you maybe one of those. As many other people, you have only one printer, but you’re not the only one who wants to use it. What you may do in this situation? One solution is to visit a local computer store and buy another printer. But I suggest that you save those $100-200 for something better and share your existing printer with your computers. It’s no rocket science and you can easily do it yourself.

I will consider a regular printer that doesn’t have a built-in network card, most home printers are like that.

When computers are already connected

Let’s assume you already have computers connected into network, then sharing a printer is matter of several minutes. In this manual, I will explain how to share a printer in Windows XP network.

Pick a computer to connect the printer to and install the printer drives on it, unless you already haven’t (refer to printer installation manual). On this computer, go to Control panel, open Printers and Faxes, right-click your printer for drop-down menu and select Sharing…:

Open Sharing tab and share your printer. Also you’ll need to assign a network name to your printer, in my case it’s “Canon iP4500.”

Now you have to install printer software on other computers that need to connect to your printer. During the installation process, you’ll be asked if the printer is local or shared; Select “shared” and complete the installation.

Congratulations! You have networked your printer with the computers.

When computers are NOT connected

In this case you have 2 options: unite the computers into network and do like described above, or you can to connect a printer to computers through a switch. This instruction works well in Mac or Linux, not only Windows, so I leave out the OS-specific details.

First, you need to buy a switch (unless you already got one) depending on what kind of connector your printer uses – USB or parallel (LPT.)

Most modern printers have USB connector; few have both USB and LPT, while some older printers are connected via LPT cable. Here you can see examples of each cable:

So, the switch you need to get should generally look like one of these:

Please mind that with parallel switcher you may have to switch it manually to select what computer should use the printer. USB model are generally automatic switches.

In your next step, you need you install the printer drivers and other software (optionally) on every computer to use the printer. Then plug the cables from the computers into the switch and connect the switch to the printer.

Congratulations again! Now you know how to connect several computers to a printer in other way.

Submit to:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Previously on ”How to Detect and Fix Problems with Laser Monochrome Printing” we examined toner cartridge components and reviewed several possible reasons of printing problems. Today we shall pick up from where we left last time.

3. Magnetic Roller

This roller in HP printer is a metal cylinder covered with special coating with a magnetized bar inside. This part rarely gets out of order. For most part dirty print is caused by toner dosing.

The dirt “gives” a stripe to magnetic roller, thus, “taking away” a stripe from image on prints:

One of the signs of incorrect toner dosing is spilling of toner into the split between the metering blade and the magnetic roller:

Toner is spilled onto magnetic roller, which transfers the toner on photo drum. Photo drum, in turn, transfers the toner on paper, just like it should. This is how those needless stripes occur along the length of the page. The stripes may be black, if the split is wider than necessary for toner dosing, or they may be light, when the dosing is hindered due to dirt-clogged split.

In the office, anything may qualify as dirt, even a fly.

 Again, the problem is fixed by reassembling the cartridge or by replacing it with new.

4. Waste Toner Hopper

As we mentioned at the beginning, a cartridge contains a wiper blade that cleans unused toner. Such toner is collected into special container, waste hopper, and then is cleaned out during remanufacturing and refilling. Alas, sometimes low quality toner or carelessness of labor may lead to unpredictable results.

The prints clearly show that overrun waste hopper makes the toner spill over.

To fix this problem you should empty the waste hopper or replace the cartridge.

It’s worth mentioning that printing artifacts are not always due to faulty parts. For most users, a printer is a mere box that prints. However, for all technical service engineers printer is a piece of art, even if it’s a simple desktop monochrome printer. So, before blaming it all on printing consumables, one should make sure it is cartridge that’s guilty.

An exotic deviations in hardware of Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 1300: failed changes of thermofilm caused ripples around letters:

To determine which part of the printer is guilty of bad printing, it is necessary to have some knowledge of printing technologies and how they work.

Certainly, looking for most common cartridge breakings we can consider 5-7 more situations of bad printing. But it’s very often that the cartridge was used for 2-3 or even 10 times. Such a prolonged use results in critical worn-out and subsequent replacement of this and that parts of the cartridge. To avoid these unexpected troubles, use only quality printing consumables. The trick is not to get confused with everyday situation when looking for some extraordinary breaking:

This cartridge is simply running out of toner:

Cartridges won’t fail if you regularly replace them and use quality toner for refills. Remember, saving on savings may cost you a pretty penny.

That’s how prints should look like, regardless printer brand or model. They are all crisp and contrast, without a single mark. Making the right decision on printing supplies and refilling and remanufacturing company, will save time and money and spare you of headache. This is a fact proven by time and numerous companies.

Submit to:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!