Archive for the ‘Printer Maintenance’ Category

Printers are built to be durable, regardless if you are using an expensive office printer or a base model personal photo printer.  These machines can last for many years if they are maintained properly.  There are simple steps a user can take to increase the lifespan of a printer and reduce the need for a professional technician.

The simplest step that one can take is to cover the machine when it is not being used.  This will protect it from the dust particles that are always in the air.  Be sure to occasionally wipe the outside of the machine and keep it relatively clean.  Unplugging it when you are finished using it for the day is also recommended.  Be sure to fold in all trays and wipe down any glass surface, which is only applicable for multipurpose machines that have a flatbed scanning surface. 

Interior cleaning kits are available online or in some local office supplies stores.  These will typically come with standard instructions as well as lubrication for the metal rods and rollers, wipes and lens covers.  Keeping the printhead clean is important for overall quality, as this is the part that applies the ink to the paper.  Excess ink will build up and eventually cause smudging or blotchy print jobs.  It can also clog the nozzles.

Be sure the paper you are using in the printer is clean and has been left packaged until needed.  The paper touches the moving parts inside the machine and can transfer dirt and grime.

If moving a printer to a new location, it is fine to leave the cartridges install, but be sure to remove all cable and cords that could get damaged.

For consumers that have purchased a machine close to the high end of the spectrum, it is advised to seek the help of professionals to clean the inside of the unit.  The expensive models are complex and it is better to leave it up to a trained expert.

If you are like most people, you probably have multiple computers in your home or office. Maybe at your house you have a family desktop computer, a private lap top for your work files and a laptop for your high school daughter. With multiple computers in one home working off of the same printer, there are steps that need to be taken. When you connect your desktop computer directly to the printer via USB cable, you can actually allow other computers to print from the device by adding them to your network.

If you are operating on a PC, connect the printer to your computer using the USB cable. Turn the printer on and then the printer should automatically be installed on your computer.

Next, open up your “Start” menu, and then click on the “Printers and Faxes” option. You now need to right click on “Properties”. You should see a “Sharing” tab, which you need to go to and then click on “Share this printer”. You also need to type a name for the printer into the box. Next, click “Ok”, which will save all of your settings and work.

Now, go to whatever other PC computers you want to connect to and open up “Printers and Faxes” in the control panel.

You now need to click on “Add a printer” and then “A network printer” or “printer attached to another computer” will work too. You will now need to click “Next” and then type the location in the box. Click the “finish” box, which finishes the setup.

If you have a Mac, you will need to do things a little differently. Click on the dock, and then click on the “Print & Fax” option. Click the “+” and go to the default pop up tab. Click “Add” and then go to “Sharing”. Here you need to click “Printer Sharing” and check the box you want to share with the computer. Do this again for the second computer.

If your printer is on a network, chances are that you have bidirectional support going on in your office. While you may not know what is, bidirectional support is the communication that goes on between a network of users. It is what allows users to view information on the current jobs printing. It also is the reason why you can see things like printer status—essentially bidirectional support provides feedback between your computer and your printer. If the bidirectional support is for some reason not working or has not been enabled yet, it is very simple to set up if these directions are followed.

First, open up “Start” on your computer screen. Type “printer” into the search box on this menu, and then press the “Enter” button.

Now, a list of printers may appear somewhere on the screen. You should be able to find an icon for your printer. Right click on any icons for your machine and then choose “delete”.  Click with the right side of the mouse and blank space and then hit “Run as administrator”. Next, choose “Remove driver and driver package.”

Go to your “Start” menu and then type in “APPWIZ.CPL” into the search box. Now press “Enter”. If there is any software related to your printer, you must remove it.

Go on to your manufacturer’s website and go to whatever section has the downloads and drivers. Usually you can find this in the “Support” section on the website. Next, download any drivers or updates your printer may have. Save these onto your desktop.

To launch the setup wizard, simply click on the driver you need to install, and follow all given prompts. When the new driver is installed, your bidirectional support should be enabled or work properly. If this does not work, call your manufacturer.

It never fails. You are printing a big project for work when your printer runs out of ink. Nothing is more frustrating than coming to the realization that you can’t do anything to save yourself. While you may fear the moment when your ink runs out with horror, if you have an Epson inkjet printer, you shouldn’t. Epson inkjet printers come with the ability to check the ink level without even removing the ink cartridges. Whether you have a black-and-white printer or a color printer, this little trick can check the levels of your ink cartridges so you never have to worry about running out of ink at an inconvenient time again. Finally, you can plan ahead when it comes to your cartridges if you follow these simply instructions below.

First, install Epson StatusMonitor program. If you still have the CD that came with your printer, it should be included in that. If you don’t, though, you can easily find this software on the Epson website.

Next, open the program up in any program on your computer. You most likely want to choose something like Microsoft Word or Excel. As long as it’s an application that allows you to print, though, you can use it. Click on “File” in the control bar of your program.

Now, select either “Page Setup” or “Print” on that menu. A box should open up, and click “StatusMonitor” inside that box. Now an “Epson StatusMonitor” box should open up. If it doesn’t open up on its own, click the “Utility” icon, and then choose “Epson StatusMonitor”.

Click the “Update” button, and the ink levels that pop up should be whatever is left in each tank. To print the results, simply click “Print”.

To keep your printer up to date always and to give yourself ink level warnings, hit the “Configuration” button and adjust your settings so your ink level is always monitored.

Inside every laser printer there are dozens of parts that help the machine function and operate. While many of these on every type of laser printer are the same, like the rollers, fuser, drums and toner cartridges, there are a few smaller pieces many don’t know about, and sometimes these pieces differ depending on what manufacturer created the product. For instance, if you are operating with a Brother laser printer, there is a part unique to only that genre of printers—the corona wire. While you may not know exactly what the corona wire is or what it does, it is in fact an important piece to your machine’s operation.

What exactly is a corona wire? A corona wire is the element in a Brother Laser printer that takes toner off of the imaging drum and transfers it onto the paper. It does this by putting a charge onto the paper so that your toner is attracted to it. If you didn’t have a working corona wire, you don’t have a working Brother laser printer.

If you’ve been experiencing spotty prints or very light print jobs, you most likely have a dirty corona wire. Most people don’t understand how important it is to regularly clean and maintain the corona wire inside their printer—many don’t even know the corona wire is an essential piece. However, the cleaner your corona wire is, the better your prints will turn out. You should clean your corona wire whenever you replace a toner cartridge.

To clean the corona wire, open up the printer and pull out both the drum and toner cartridge. Hold the drum, and slide the blue tab portion of the wire back and forth several times. You could also use a dry clean paint brush to brush toner off. Sometimes this tab will be green instead of blue, so don’t let that throw you off. Do not use water! Once you’ve done these things, click the blue tab into the home position and reassemble the machine—your prints should look as good as new.

Did you know that inkjet printers can operate at different settings? While you may be printing high quality documents every day, you may not know that your printer has the ability to print in different modes. This is a great way to save resources and time depending on what you are printing.

Generally there are four different modes—fast draft, fast normal, normal and maximum dpi. However, with HP models, you will only see three settings—draft mode, normal mode and best mode.

What are the differences? Fast draft mode and draft mode are essentially for those of you printing text documents. If you are printing out 15 pages of text, there’s no reason why you would need the same high quality and attention to detail as you would if you were printing intense graphics. This will give you a lower resolution, and it will help you save money. With fast draft or draft mode, you probably are going to use only a fraction of the ink used with the other inkjet modes.

Fast normal mode is a little quicker than the normal mode and prints them at a higher quality setting. Generally fast normal mode will use up more ink than fast draft mode, because the text produced will print with more color and precision. However, they will not look as exceptional as projects done in normal mode.

Normal mode will give you a great balance between speed and quality. It is generally the default mode for printers, and generally will be the best choice for documents. This setting will give very high quality results for flyers, book reports and photos alike.

The last setting—best mode or maximum dpi mode—will use the most ink and create the highest quality documents. It also takes longer to complete a job than any of the other settings. That sacrifice in speed makes it perfect for buyers to create scrapbook pages, postcards, photos and intense graphics.

Canon has created a tool called ScanGear that enables Canon copiers to scan directly from the copy machine to a computer. This tool can be very helpful to offices that have a copier, but don’t have a standalone scanner. If you want to add this tool, follow these simple instructions.

The first thing you need to do is go to Canon’s website and download the ScanGear Tool. If you have a monochrome copier, use version 2.21. If you are working with a color copier, download version 2.71 or newer.

You will then need to run the “EXE” for the downloaded program. This by default will unpack the EXE to your TEMP folder.

Now, go to your TEMP folder, and launch the setup file. This prompts the ScanGear tool to install.

Once you have installed to tool properly, you will need to input your IP address. Once you type this in, click on the “Test Connection” button.

Now you should be able to scan using the copier. Walk over to your Canon copier, and press down on the “Scan” button. This will change your copier to “Scan Mode”. To force the mode, you will need to select “Online” on your copier. Your copier will then search your computer for the ScanGear software.

You should run a test page, so grab any document and place it onto the feeder tray of your Canon copier.

Go back to your computer, and choose the “Scan” option. Your copier should begin scanning the document now. When the “Scan New Document” box appears, choose whether you want to scan in black-and-white, black-and-white from color page, color or grayscale. You will also have three boxes of settings you will need to check off—original is double sided, prompt for additional pages and view file after scanning.

If this installation process doesn’t work, you may want to consult Canon directly or look in your user’s manual for directions specific to your machine.

If you have an iPad, you probably love all of the cool apps that you can download onto your iPad. Once you find something you like though, you may want to print it out. Printing from an iPad isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do, though. There are different programs and instructions to get you set up.

First things first—you will need to download the AirPrint app. Once that is downloaded, use MediaFire to save the AirPrint zip-file. To do this process correctly, make sure you do not have any other applications running in MediaFire or RapidShare.

After the file is downloaded, unzip it and save to “C:\Program Files\airprint”. Doing this will create a new file in your program named “AirPrint”.

On the “Run” menu, type in the command “cmd”. When a black display box opens up, you need to type, “sc.exe create AirPrint binPath= “C:\Program Files\AirPrint\airprint.exe -s” depend= “Bonjour Service” start= auto” into it. This is the programming code you will need to get AirPrint up and running, so make sure everything is spelled out correctly and capital letters are used in the correct places.

When the code has been correctly keyed, you should receive a reply from apple. Here you will be given the option to “Allow Access” to AirPrint, and you need to click onto that.

Once you have done so, go ahead and try testing with your iPad. Most likely you will be asked to assign a username and password to the account. Go ahead and set this up if you’d like or just choose “Guest Account” instead.

The only downside of trying to print from an iPad is that there are only a few printers that support this—there are only about two dozen. At this point, only HP printers support Airprint. There are multiple programs that support printing from an iPad; however, AirPrint is the most successful and cheapest of the applications.

HP all-in-one printers are some of the most popular machines out there on the market. One of the reasons why they are so popular is because they are so convenient, giving users many different features to keep up with the user’s needs. It seems no matter what you need out of your HP multifunction device, HP has you covered. If you have an HP all in one that includes fax machine you know they are a little pricey unless buyers use remanufactured ink and toner cartridges. If you have junk and spam faxes coming into your office, you know just how much ink and toner can be wasted, though, as well as time. If you want to stop wasting paper and cartridges on unwanted faxes, setup an HP junk fax blocker onto your printing device.

In order to find out if your printer has the feature, consult your user’s manual. If your machine does, first make sure that you have Caller ID set up on your phone line. Choose the “Setup” icon on your printer’s LCD menu or touch screen. Next pick the “Fax Setup” icon, followed by “Basic Fax Setup”. Then, hit the “Junk Fax Blocker”. The next screen will give you the option to “Add Numbers”. Click on that, and then press “Select from Caller ID History”.  Scroll through your past incoming fax numbers until you land on the number you’d like to block. Once you find it, press the “OK” button.

If you need to manually block a number, choose the “Enter Number” option instead of “Add Numbers”. Using your fax machine’s keypad, enter the number in you would like to block. Make sure you press “Enter” after you key it in so that the number is saved.

If for some reason you need to remove a block you’ve set up, you can easily do that too. Simply go to “Junk Blocker Setup” and “Remove Numbers”.

Imagine that you are having the PS3 game of your life. None of your friends are around, but you would love to share the moments that led you to victory. You may not know this, but if you have a PlayStation3 compatible printer, you can print any or all of these moments to share with whoever you want.

Using your inkjet printer, you can capture photos or screenshots from your game and print them from your PlayStation directly to your printer.

The steps to PlayStation3 printing are relatively easy.

Make sure that you have the latest version of software installed on your PS3. If you don’t, visit the PlayStation System Update and download any updated version. Make sure you also install this onto your console.

Next, you have to synch your printer to your PS3. Go to “Settings”, then “Printer Selection” and finally “Printer Settings”. Once you get here, chose your printer out of the selections.

Now, connect your PS3 and printer via USB. On your PS3, select “Photo”, and then chose whatever image you want to print. Press the “X” button. Then pick the “Print” option. Here you can check the print settings and make sure it is printing to the correct machine. Press the “X” button to see the options menu. This will let you change the print settings. You can also chose how many prints you would like here as well, changing the number of pages printing from “1” to whatever you’d like. Some printers will give you editing options, while others will simply let you print.

Once you’ve done all of that, ch0ose “Print” again. Your images from the PS3 should make their way to the printer. Though not all printers are compatible with PS3s, quite a few are, like the HP Photosmart Plus e-All-in-One and the HP Photosmart eStation. The Lexmark 123 and the Dell 1700n laser printer are some other popular printers that are compatible with a PS3; however, you must download a driver in order for these to operate in conjunction with the console.