"Bill Jeffrey" wrote in message
...
Arfa Daily wrote:
"Snap Whipcrack.............." wrote in message
news:wz1Ih.11644$ig.2390@trndny01...
Every time I want to print something the damn ink head is dried up. I
don't print much. So I have to buy a $50.00 print cartridge every time
I want to print 2 pages. I think I should get a rebate on the ink left
in the old cartridge. The cleaning cycle most of the time don't clear it
up.
I'm thinking of going back to dot matrix. Do lasers have the same
drying up problem from lack of use?
I would call an ink jet printer a failed invention if it can't work on
demand. Maybe they need a law suite slapped on them.

Is it by any chance an Epson ...??

Arfa

Yup, Epsons are famous for this. I trashed a very nice Epson a couple
weeks ago because of this problem. No amount of cleaning will help it, and
I'm talking about much more aggressive cleaning than just running the
CLEAN cycle.. The problem with Epson is that the print nozzles are part of
the machine, and hence are not replaceable (in a practical sense). Other
mfrs, including HP, put the print head in the cartridge. The nozzles can
still dry out, but at least replacing the cartridge gets you clean new
print heads.

I read somewhere - I think on the HP website - that if you are not going
to use your printer for a while, you can prevent dried out nozzles by
putting your cartridge in a zip-lock baggie with a piece of moist paper
towel. Of course, some printers (is it Epson again?) won't let you
reinsert a cartridge once you have pulled it ...

Can you still buy a dot matrix printer???

Bill

I too drop-kicked my second Epson down the garden a couple of weeks ago,
after repeated clogging episodes and having to use a gallon of ink that's
dearer than rocket fuel every time, to get them to clean. I have watched
them clog whilst the piggin' thing is actually printing !! What really used
to gall me, was that you could not run a clean / purge cycle on individual
heads, which meant that sometimes you virtually emptied half full cartridges
that were not even giving a problem. My take on the problem, is that Epsons
don't go to sleep when they are not in use. I like to have my printer on
24/7 and ready to roll. I can't be doing with waiting half an hour whilst
the printer grunts and wheezes and checks that it's on line and that it has
ink and that it has paper and on and on and on ... I want to just hit
"print", and 30 seconds later, have a piece of printed paper in my hand. But
when you leave an Epson on, it just leaves the heads out where it finished,
and that, I think, is where the problem lies. I have now gone back to an HP,
as I always had in the early days of home PCs. This one, unlike my previous
HPs, does not have the heads built into the cartridges - they are part of
the printer itself. However, the trick is that when this printer detects
that it has not been used for 20 minutes or so, it goes to sleep and parks
the heads back up, presumably sealing them onto the purging station. This
results in the printer being ready to go within seconds at all times, but
without dried up heads.

Arfa