I was forced into it. Really!

Cleaning An Inkjet Printhead

Not that it's important, but Copyright © 2/13/2005 Alex P Janssen Jr.

When your inkjet print head becomes clogged, you may have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying to cleaning it.

First off. Let me get this out of the way. If your printhead or printer or computer or anything else you own or possess becomes unusable after you try to follow this procedure, don't come blaming me. I cannot and will not guarantee anything or be held responsible for anything that may happen to you or your property as a result of following the procedure outlined on this page. This procedure worked for me and I thought it was relatively safe, so I thought I would publish it for others to try.

If you have an inkjet printer with separate ink tanks like my Canon BJC-4550, you could try, as I did, soaking the business end of the printhead in a warm bath of water and rubbing alcohol.

I selected a small jelly jar that was just large enough to hold the print head with the ink tanks removed. I added enough (2 to 4 ounces total) water and alcohol in a ratio of 2 parts water to 1 part alcohol to cover the ink inlets with which the ink tanks mate.

I place the printhead in the solution in the jelly jar and then the jelly jar then into a 1 quart sauce pan with an inch of water in it. I then covered the sauce pan and heated the whole think up to about 115 degrees. That's almost too hot to put in your finger. Don't go any hotter than you can stand with your finger. You don't want to take a chance on doing damage to the print head, you just want to clean it.

I removed it from the heat and let it soak, periodically lifting the lid and agitating the solution with the printhead, for about an hour and a half. Be sure to reheat as necessary to keep the temperature up. I think this is important as hot molecules move around more and may tend to loosen dried ink faster than cold ones.

When I took the printhead out of the solution I carefully shook off the excess liquid and dried the printhead with a tissue. I quickly took it from the drying process to re-installing the ink tanks and placing it back in the printer. The first thing I did was to start a cleaning session with the printer software. Then I did a print test. The Canon BJC-4550 software can do a nozzle test. This produced a nice test pattern showing all the nozzles were working again.

This process saved me $50 for a new printhead with new ink tanks, this time.

I hope it saves your printhead from the trash, as well. Good luck!