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2011-05-18

Summer Printer Maintenance Tips

Printers are built for reliability. HP Printers, Lexmark Printers, Canon Printers and all major printer manufacturers make them to last. But if you don’t perform common sense maintenance actions, your printer can fail you when you need it most.  Summer printing must come out perfect; reason why we wanted to share four ways you can perform standard maintenance on your printer to ensure it operates at its best:







  1. Make sure the print heads are aligned. When the nozzles are all pointing in the right direction, the ink gets to the right place. When you get grid-like patterns on your printouts, or white lines repeating through the text, your print heads are out of alignment. Most print heads can be fixed in their alignment by following instructions in the owner’s manual for your printer. You can also go to the website of your printer’s manufacturer for help.
  2. Clean the ink nozzle on your printer. Again, with the ink nozzle clogged or obstructed, ink won’t get to the paper correctly. Most printers have a Maintenance or Services tab in the printer software toolbox, and should have a “clean print cartridges” option. Follow the instructions here to clean the nozzles.
  3. Ensure the carriage rods operate smoothly. Sometimes you may notice a loud chattering noise or hear a grinding when the carriage moves from side to side. What is needed is to clean the slider rods, and lubricate them as well. Just turn your printer off, access that assembly and wipe the carriage rails with a lint-free cloth and warm water. Dry off the rails, and then add one tiny drop of synthetic oil to the carriage rails. You can wipe the oil so each side of the carriage rail is lubricated. (For the correct oil and more detailed instructions, see your owner’s manual.)
  4. Update your printer drivers. When you update your printer driver, you will ensure your printer operates correctly. You will also get the latest features for your printer from the manufacturer. Simply go to the website of the manufacturer in order to find the driver you need according to the operating system you have on your computer. There you’ll find directions to download and install.
Of course, using the correct ink and toner cartridges is important to get high quality printouts. You can be assured that compatible and remanufactured cartridges will work just fine in your printer as long as they are manufactured with integrity and high standards.

Summer Printables for Kids Links to Know

Home printers will get lot's of little fingerprints on them during the summer with the following Top Free sites where you will find great printable ideas, crafts, coloring pages, reading books, even play money to print and pay all the Barbie expenses during the summer and boy do they add up. To make it easier we choose the best 5 places to get fun projects and pages ready to print.

Keeping the making your life easier theme just click HERE to go straight to our home page to find the lowest prices on ink and toner cartridges ink and toner cartridges. The success of your kids summer printing is to have ink available when needed. We guarantee the lowest prices on most popular printers from HP, Brother, Lexmark, Canon, and more.  If you want to save even more use remanufactured or compatible cartridges that have the same page yield of OEM cartridges but cost up to 70% less sometimes. 

Here is our list of Top Free Kids Printable Sites:

Free Stuff 4 Kids - Excellent variety of printable projects, downloads, printables and much more. 

Printables4Kids - The name says it all, this site features coloring pages, math worksheets, mazes, pencil fun, word scramble and much more.

ABC Teach -  Because summer can also be used to study in a fun way this site has over 38,000 pages of printable worksheets, with more materials added each week!

Woo Jr - Kids Activities, Crafts, Printable Ideas, Games and Worksheets.

Cartoon Jr - Are you a fan of Disney, Nickelodeon & Cartoon Network? This is the site to get printable and games from your favorite cartoon characters.