Certain brands of cleaning cartridges use entirely clear cleaning fluid. This, as you may imagine, makes it very difficult to see if the cartridges are working as we would hope. If you are lucky, for a cartridge that has worked well, you will ‘just’ get to see the last of your coloured ink be purged from the printer using a nozzle check. So what’s the best way to test that these are working?

The best and / or only method that we know of is to print a Purge Print. (you can download one from our Downloads page). So, our method is as follows:

1. Prior to installing the cleaning cartridge, store it right-way-up, and just prior to inserting into the printer, tap it on a table a few times;
2. Insert the cleaning cartridge into the printer, having accessed the cartridge by pressing the ink-change button or other possible methods outlined on this page;
3. Run a cleaning cycle, then a nozzle-check;
4. Hopefully, you will see faint ink marks, indicating the cleaners are starting to work already;
5. Run another cleaning cycle, then nozzle check. If you see no output from the nozzle check, you may be tempted to think that the clean has worked entirely. It may well have done...
6. ...but to be as sure as you can, use some scrap paper (ideally, photocopier type paper that is 80gsm or thereabouts. If you use nice inkjet paper, you will not only be wasting paper, but you may not see some results we are looking for) and print the ‘purge print’ on to the paper. There is no need to use any particular printer-driver settings;
7. You will hopefully see the paper is ruffled and probably a little bit smelly as it comes out of the printer. If it is, then it is fairly safe to assume the cleaning cycle has worked, and you can now move to your new inks. Nevertheless, print another Purge Print or two; this is just to ensure that any last remnants of old ink are cleared. If you are not confident that the cleaner has worked, please wait for a couple of hours, and start from point 3 above.

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.