The Most Common Printer Repairs and How To Avoid Them

 

Printers can be costly machines. The cheapest home printers are expected to last for years. Careful ink management keeps the costs associated with frequent printing down. Safe storage and other precautions help keep printers safe. However, printers are still prone to damage and other problems. While many people are capable of fixing a computer on their own, printers are a more esoteric device.

Reduce your print quality. Found in the printer options menu, a reduced print quality is hardly noticeable in every day printing. You might notice if you're printing large images with a high DPI on photo paper, but if all you're doing is printing text documents and forms, a low print quality is perfectly acceptable. This has a few effects. First, it lowers the amount of ink necessary to print a page. This saves you ink and money in the long term. It also speeds up your printing, so you can print larger projects faster.

2: If your printing is spotty or streaked, use the cleaning function. This avoids taking the printer to a printer repair service. All you need to do is run the cleaning cycle, which you can find by consulting your manual. Every printer has its own cleaning instructions, most of which are automatic once you initialize the process. In case you have problem you can do HP printer repairs A dirty print head is the cause of many printing errors, especially for inkjet printers. You can print a test page after the cleaning cycle to see if the cleaning solved the problem.

3: If you find yourself frequently running out of ink, search for your printer's specific ink cartridge online. Chances are you might find "cartridge reset" tips or instructions. HP printers especially are known for telling you you're out of ink long before you actually are, in a bid to get you to buy more from the company. 

4: Avoid third party ink refills. You have no way to control the quality of the ink refill. This means you run the risk of the ink cartridge exploding or leaking during printing or inactivity. This can irreparably damage your printer unless you completely disassemble and clean the machine. This is a common task in printer repair, and it's generally more expensive than the cost you would have saved from the third party refills.