Do Not Throw Away Dirty Print Heads - Clean Them

You will notice that as time goes on the quality of your presentations, documents and reports do not look as crisp because the printer ink cartridges are running out of ink. The quality of your prints considerably decrease as time goes on or the quality may not be great if you bring an inkjet printer back from the grave. The only solution might be to clean your printer's head to ensure the you get the optimal performance out of your printer. You can be sure that a clogged printer head is to blame when printer ink cannot properly flow from the ink cartridge to the paper.

This is why it is so important to regularly clean your printer's head to make sure your documents continue to be top notch.
You have to start by getting familiar with your printer.

Locate the print head, but before you do anything, make sure you understand what it does.
Basically what happens is little droplets of ink leave pass through the nozzle of a printer ink cartridge and transfer to the print head, which in return transfers the printer ink onto the paper.
What happens, is as the device prints, the small drops of ink get stuck by the opening of the print head.
If these droplets have time to get dry, they often form a crusty layer around the print head's opening, causing the device to print disappointingly.
Here is what you can do to clean a print head if you are experiencing these problems: Do-It-Yourself Start by taking out the old printer ink cartridges. Next, dip a cotton swab that has been dabbed in hot water or alcohol and rub it around the print head. This will break up the stuck on ink. Some brands, such as Canon, make printers with a removable printer head, which makes it a whole lot easier to clean.
If you do decide to use isopropyl alcohol, be very careful especially if your printer has rubber gaskets because it can be damaging.
The alcohol will dry the gaskets out, further damaging your printer. Now, if you have a print head that is removable, you must take out the cartridge from the head and take the print head out of the printer.

Either use hot water, isopropyl alcohol or a combination of the two and fill up a bowl, then place the dirty printer head in the bowl.

You should let the printer head soak for at least an hour and up to an entire day for tough to remove ink. After you finish soaking the print head, you should air dry it before replacing it and run the cleaning function before you print something. That should remove any bits of dried ink that have loosened during the soak. Using Cleaning Software Start by checking your printer's manual for how to clean a printer head.
If you cannot find the manual, you can always find your printer's manufacturer online and look up the printer model to get a copy of the instructions.

Remember, there is no reason to panic. Over the life of your printer, you will have problems with empty an printer ink cartridge, paper jams and other issues. When you notice that your documents are not as crisp, check your printer head.
So don't just pitch your printer when the documents start getting fuzzy. All it needs is a good cleaning and it will be back to printing quality documents.