Maintaining Ink Cartridges - Lexmark Impact S300 Series Quick Reference Manual

6
Close the printer.

Maintaining ink cartridges

In addition to the following tasks that you can perform, your printer performs an automatic maintenance
cycle every week if it is plugged into an electrical outlet. It will briefly come out of Power Saver mode or
will temporarily power on if it is turned off.
Aligning the printhead
If the characters or lines on your printer image appear jagged or wavy, then you may need to align the
printhead.
Using the printer control panel
1
Load plain paper.
2 From the home screen, navigate to:
> Maintenance > > Align Printer >
An alignment page prints.
Note: Do not remove the alignment page until printing is finished.
Using the printer software
For Windows users
1
Load plain paper.
2
Click or Start.
3
Click All Programs or Programs, and then select the printer program folder from the list.
4
Navigate to:
Printer Home > select your printer > Maintenance tab > Align cartridges
5
Follow the instructions on the computer screen.
For Macintosh users
Note: This feature is available only in Mac OS X version 10.5 or earlier.
1
Load plain, unmarked paper.
2
From the Finder desktop, double-click the printer folder.
3
Double-click the Printer Utility icon.
4
From the Maintenance tab, click Print Alignment Page.
5
Follow the instructions on the computer screen.
>
If you aligned the cartridges to improve print quality, then print your document again. If print quality has
not improved, then clean the printhead nozzles.
Cleaning the printhead nozzles
Poor print quality is sometimes due to clogged printhead nozzles. Clean the printhead nozzles to improve
the quality of your prints.
Notes:
•
Cleaning the printhead nozzles uses ink, so clean them only when necessary.
•
Deep cleaning uses more ink, so try the Clean Printhead option first to save ink.
•
If the ink levels are too low, you must replace the ink cartridges before you can clean the printhead
nozzles.
Using the printer control panel
1
From the printer control panel, navigate to:
> Maintenance >
2
Press the arrow buttons to scroll to Clean Printhead or Deep Clean Printhead, and then
press .
3
Press .
A cleaning page prints.
Using the printer software
For Windows users
1
Click or Start.
2
Click All Programs or Programs, and then select the printer program folder from the list.
3 Navigate to:
Printer Home > Maintenance > Clean cartridges
A cleaning page prints.
For Macintosh users
Note: This feature is available only in Mac OS X version 10.5 or earlier.
1
Load plain paper.
2
From the Finder desktop, double-click the printer folder.
3
Double-click the Printer Utility icon.
4
From the Maintenance tab, select Clean Print Nozzles.
A cleaning page prints.
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