Epson printer reduces your workload by providing on-time & high-quality printouts. At the same time, they are also prone to errors or produce fainted, streaked, or incomplete printouts. Suppose you are also dealing with the situation like Epson printer not printing at all or delivers the unacceptable print quality. In that case, it's most likely have a clogged nozzle or dust has accumulated in the printhead. Are you finding an accurate and reliable solution? You have landed over the right webpage, where you will get four steps to avoid and eliminate this nasty situation.
Why has the Epson printer printhead clogged?
Not one but multiple reasons causes your Epson printhead to get clogged. It may be dust accumulation, scrap ink, or residual ink smears, etc. can block the printhead. After brainstorming, we reach the following conclusion:
· The user is not disciplined in changing the ink cartridge when the Epson printer displays the low ink warning.
· Continue printing even after seeing the faded printouts also results in clogging.
· Irregular usage of printers also results in ink getting dried up in the nozzles. Hence you must turn on your printer once in a day or two so that your printer can run a mini-cleaning cycle and get the ink flowing again.
Is that already clogged? Here is how to clean the printhead
Precautions have to be taken to avoid the printhead or nozzle clogging issue. However, if the printhead is already clogged, you will need to take specific measures described in this section.
Step 1. Run the automated printhead cleaning cycles
Make sure not to turn off your printer during the printhead cleaning cycle. Turning off the printer during the process might damage the unit.
1. Ensure that your Epson printer is not showing any error on the LCD screen.
2. If you see any error, then resolve it first before running the printhead cleaning cycle.
3. Now press the home button, click setup, and click the maintenance option.
4. Now choose the option printhead nozzle check.
5. Your Epson will deliver a printout with four color grids to inform which nozzle is blocked.
6. If there are no gaps, then click done.
7. If the lines are faint or the gaps appear, then click clean the printhead and continue.
The clogged printhead is directly responsible for the Epson printer not printing issue, and cleaning the printhead resolves the problem. It can be done manually in several ways, although the others are more complex and challenging than the instructions described above.
Step 2. Manually clean the printhead sponge with distilled water
1. Turn off your Epson printer, open the cartridge access door.
2. You will see the printhead assembly, carrying ink cartridges.
3. To the left of the assembly, you will see a small plastic lever.
4. Moving it forward and down will release the printhead, and after that, you will need to push this assembly to your right.
5. Ensure that you push the lever to the final stop and protrude the assembly to come out.
6. However, a few of the printer models do not have a lever. In that case, the user needs to print a page with the top up and disconnect the printer when the assembly is at the center.
7. Now you will see the sponge on the printhead, which stores ink from the cartridge.
8. Now take an eyedropper or plastic syringe and saturate the sponges with distilled water or a cleaning solution.
9. You will need to slide the assembly over the sponges to as far as possible.
10. Wait for the next 15 minutes to let set the distilled water on the sponge.
11. To get the best results, let it soak overnight.
12. The next morning, print a couple of dense pages from your Epson printer and check if you get satisfactory results. Head over to the next section to clean the ink ports.
Step 3. Put the distilled water in the ink ports
1. Uninstall the ink cartridge from the printhead carriage.
2. Once you remove the ink cartridge, the cone shape small indents will appear in front of you.
3. These are known as the ink ports, which take ink from the cartridge to the printhead, and they are one for each black or color cartridge.
4. Take an eyedropper filled with distilled water and put a couple of drops into these ink ports.
5. If you are unsure where to put in the ink cleaner, you can take experts' help.
6. Ensure wiping out the excess water or cleaning solution from the printhead.
7. Now print a couple of test pages to evaluate the results of these instructions. Still, your Epson is not delivering satisfactory printouts? Don't worry! The next section will help.
Step 4. Use paper towels to clean the printhead
1. Turn your printer off if it's already turned on.
2. Take a paper towel and tear it in half, fold it lengthwise and make it about one and a half-inch wide.
3. Now open the cartridge access door of the printer and locate the rubber rollers that feed paper through the printer.
4. Put the paper towel in between them, add a few drops of distilled water or cleaning solution to the towel.
5. Now you will have to run the printhead assembly over the paper towel and keep it at rest for at least 10 to 15 minutes.
6. Let the dried ink on the printhead to dissolve in water.
7. You might observe the collection of ink on the paper towel.
8. Repeat these steps with fresh damped paper towels until you observe no ink collection in the towel.
9. Before turning your printer back on, make sure that the printhead assembly has returned to its original position, and it's not at the center.
10. Make your printer to deliver a couple of printouts and verify if it prints super clear printouts.
Get in touch with Epson printer experts
These four steps are most useful to fix the printing issues in the Epson printer. The printhead issue occurs due to faster printing speed and expecting high-quality images in bulk from your printer. To avoid instances of printhead clogging, you must use your printer regularly. Even then you face the Epson printer not printing issue, contact the Epson printer experts. We are just a call away and available 24/7 for assistance.