[LI SNOWBIRD]

Originally Posted by Virtual Geezer

During my working career I had my hands in thousands of HP ink jet printers and there are a couple of things that you can do but I make no guarantees.

First of all what make of printers are we dealing with here?

If it is an HP printer the easy thing is to just take the ink cartridges with you. Remove them from the printer and cover the print head with a piece of tape. HP ink is water solvable so if the cartridge dries out just get a damp rag and wipe the nozzle where the ink comes out of the cartridge. This most always works on the older cartridges that have the actual head in the cartridge itself. You may want to run the damp rag over the cartridge every couple of weeks or so. When you do rub the cartridge go easy and if possible use a lint free rag.




The older model of HP Ink Jet printers were very easy to take apart. Four screws and the cover almost fell off. Once the cover was off you could clean out the capping station with ease. The way the older printers worked is that before the print head moved over to put ink on the paper for the first line of printing it would spritz a very small amount of ink into a little well area to the right side of the printer and this was called the capping station. The small ink would dry but over time and with a lot of usage would end up looking like grease but only black and never dry. If it built up to much it would collect on the bottom of the cartridges and be dragged across the paper leaving black lines. Cleaning the capping station correct that problem.

Now the newer printers are next to impossible to get apart without destroying it. I spent hours trying to get one apart and finally gave up. Also HP did away with the capping station concept and now just lets the ink fly. If the printer is used a lot, and by that I mean hundreds of pages a day, you may end up with a puddle of ink under the printer.

If you should get any of the ink on your hands don't worry what won't wash off will be gone in three days.

Good luck.

VG

Some of the newer cartridges has a metal nozzle and that can be more difficult to keep clean. You may just want to take the printer with you in that case.

Thanks for your detailed response. It was useful and informative.