Method 1 - Easy

The easy, but incomplete way, is to access the parking-pad using one of the methods above. Then Clean the parking pad. Repark the printhead, and allow the head to sit for an hour or two, and then run a cleaning cycle. Cleaning excess ink and possibly paper dust etc off from the parking pad will make it far more effective at absorbing any alien matter from the underside of the printhead itself.

Method 2 - Not so Easy (but more thorough)

Set the paper thickness lever to ‘+’ or as thick a setting as it will take. Take some tissue (ideally disposable lint-free cloth, perhaps a thin ‘sponge’ cloth as shown to the right) and fold it up tightly if necessary, but not so that it is too thick for the print head to move over it. You may need to cut a strip of the material as appropriate. Lay it on the black plastic towards the left of the printer - you may find it easier to tape it down at each end (again, not really necessary in our experience if you can get some sponge cloth about 3-4mm thick).

Move the print head over the cloth using either method outlined above. Once you can move the head as you will, move the head over one end of the cloth. You may now choose to dampen the cloth with an appropriate cleaning fluid - this may help with certain problems, but is not a necessity. For example, if you suspect that you have a buildup of ‘wet’ ink under your print head, it may be best to keep the cloth dry or only slightly moist. Move the head over the tissue in several smooth passes back and forwards. You will see that ink passes onto the strip. You may find you need to do this more than once - again, it depends on your assessment as to the cause of the problem - if it is too much ‘wet’ ink, one attempt may be enough. If it’s dried ink, you may want to use the cleaner and several cloths.

The procedure above is successful at clearing excess ink from the underside of the printhead, but may not catch ink that sits on the front face (nearest the grey rollers in white holders as seen in the picture above). You can manipulate your cloth to clean this area too, however, you may require a thinner cloth for this process. The image to the right shows a printhead that has just been removed from an Epson 2100 printer. Ink on the face of the printhead is obvious, but less so is the ink that sits around the protrusion of the printhead, highlighted green.

Once you have finished, return and lock the printhead, and return the paper setting to its previous position. This operation will frequently need to be followed by a head-clean utility before any improvements are seen, as the rubbing action may not only wipe the underside of the printhead, but also pull ink out of the nozzles.

Please note that MWORDS has closed. We aim to retain these support pages in the hope that they may benefit our past customers, but regret that we can no longer offer further comment or support in relation to the information above.