Maintaining Your Printer; Cleaning The Print Head - Epson Stylus COLOR 480SX Printer Basics Manual

Maintaining Your Printer

This section describes maintenance procedures to keep your printer working at its
best and preparation steps for moving your printer. Follow the instructions here
for:
Cleaning the print head (below)
Aligning the print head (on page 24)
Replacing an ink cartridge (on page 25)
Cleaning the printer (on page 29)
Transporting the printer (on page 30)
For more details, see your electronic Reference Guide, as described on page 7.

Cleaning the Print Head

If your printed image is unexpectedly light or faint, or dots or lines are missing
from the image, you may need to clean the print head. This unclogs the nozzles so
they can deliver ink properly.
You can check to see if any nozzles are clogged by running the Nozzle Check
utility. Then, if you need to clean the print heads, you can do so from the utility.
See the next section for instructions.
If you don't want to check the nozzles first, you can run the Head Cleaning utility
to clean the print head, as described on page 23.
Cleaning the print head uses ink, so clean it only if print quality declines.
When you don't turn on your printer for a long time, the print quality can
decline. It's a good idea to plug in your printer at least once a month to
maintain good print quality.
If any paper you buy comes with a cleaning sheet, don't use the cleaning
sheet with your printer; it may jam inside the printer.
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