Ink not coming out
 

My printer goes through all the motions of printing, and the ink cartridges are full (both shown by computer and because I know I havn't come close to using it all.)

I go for long periods of not printing, like a month or so. So I was thinking maybe it dried out? I've tried cleaning (the option on the computer) it, but barely any lines come out. I cleaned it about 8 times, and it has gotten slightly better, but no where near good enough. Anyone know any tricks?

The reason its so bad though is because this happens everytime. I only use like 15% of the ink before this happens. So I'm spending a lot of money for those damn inks and only use a portion. That kidna thing really annoys me.

Thanks

You didn't mention a make and model, so it's hard to get too specific. However, I know that isopropyl alcohol will dissolve dried ink; you could try using an eye dropper to put a couple drops on the print heads. Let it soak for a few minutes, then run a few cleaning cycles and see if that clears it up.

Make sure you don't get any alcohol on the contacts, though. I don't know how good a conductor alcohol is, but you're probably best to play it safe.

Certainly not an approved method but it works for my HP 720c:

remove cartridge
run a little hot water over the ink area
clean & dry with toilet paper
when everything is dry, install cartridge

I use a slightly different method than this one. I wet a paper towel with slightly warm water then hold it on the cartridge for a couple of min. When I start to see colors, I hold a dry paper towel on the same spot for another couple of minutes. It has worked everytime.

I use both hot water and alchohol and both work very well.

My method is to use a cotton swab on the end of the print heads.

Thanks everyone. It worked. It doesn't come out perfect, but at least I can use the remaining ink.

Note: Don't use toilet paper as it has a lot of lint ( makes it soft, but hell on electronics and mechanics ) if you need to use hot water, use a paper towel, or if you want to go the extra mile, cloths recommended for monitor screens. Air dry also works, tho it takes a while.

Lint is not a problem because the print head gets cleaned by the printer brfore printing.
The head does not need to be superclean. Just that the holes have to be clear.
Sometimes I use a piece of printing paper instead.

I would avoid hot air though except as a last resort.
It takes some time to dry the cart. so things might get too hot.

However, as a last resort this might help to get the ink flowing, I don't know,

Your printer should have a method of cleaning it self, run this several times, I deal with a lot of Epson’s at work, and if they are not used for a month or 2, they dry up. But by cleaning 5, 10 times, they will clear, 90% of the time. There are some that are so dried, that we can’t clean them and we just give up and get a new printer.

With my HP 720c, if one color is dry then I would have to waste a lot of ink to get that one to flow.

Say blue is dry. Running prime or clean 5-10 times on the b&w cartrige
is totally unnecessary. Also the other two colors in the color cartrige are wasted. For me, better to try to clean the thing myself.