Printer ink is known to be expensive. More costly than the price of the printer. With printer ink that costs at least twice as much as premium champagne, you will surely want to get the value of each drop. In this article, we will talk about simple and proven printing tips or strategies that can extend the life of your ink cartridge and how to get more ink out of your printer cartridge. Fortunately, there are ways to save ink and get more mileage with your cartridge. Some of them are down below.
How to Get More Ink Out of Your Printer Cartridge
1. Determine the needs of your printer:
Before buying a large pack of ink or toner, think about the cartridges your printer needs, the cartridges you already have, and how much ink or toner you will use before the printer cartridges run dry or run out. its expiration date (most reputable printer cartridges have a shelf life of two years if they are not opened and stored properly, more on this in point 5).
Many printers are monochrome, which means that they only produce documents and images in black and grey. Does your printer require black and color cartridges or do you only need black ink/toner?
If you are not sure of the type of ink or toner cartridges used by your printer model, you can consult our site using the drop-down menu. Simply select the make, series and model of your printer from the list and our site will take you to a list of cartridges you will need for your printer model.
2. Printhead Cleaning:
Sometimes you may think you run out of ink when you start printing streaks, but that may be just because your print head needs to be cleaned. There are several ways to remedy this, but the easiest way is to run the printer’s printhead cleaning function to remove dry ink from the printhead. This happens especially when your printer has not been used for a while.
3. Low-cost printer configurations:
One way to get more ink out of your cartridge is to adjust certain printer settings. If you print documents that do not require the darkest black or the most vibrant colors, you will use less ink by reducing the print quality. To do this, if you print something from the browser, right-click and select Print.
Go to “Print using the dialogue box”. In the pop-up window that opens, select your printer from the list and click the “Preferences” button. Go to the Paper / Quality tab and find the “EconoMode” checkbox in the Print Quality section of the pop-up window.
4. Maintain an optimal temperature:
Leaving your printer in extremely hot or cold conditions can also cause it to dry earlier. To improve the life of your ink cartridges, you should maintain moderate room temperature.
5. Handle and store your cartridges properly:
The way you handle and store your printer cartridges can have a big impact on life. Whether you’re trying to get the most out of your purchase or just want to learn how to take care of your printing supplies, proper storage is essential.
Leave your ink cartridges secure in their packaging. You can open the box to inspect the cartridge, but do not open its inner plastic bag until you are ready to remove the cartridge and install it in your printer.
When you are not actively using your printer, turn it off using the power button. Once it turns off properly, your printer covers each cartridge to keep it from drying out. (Note: do not simply unplug the printer as this will not move the cartridges to a covered/protected area.)
If you have an open ink cartridge that you are not currently using and you do not have the protective cap (if your printer cartridge contains one), you can store the cartridge and the printheads of your device in an airtight plastic container with a damp (but not wet) cloth.
6. Hairdryer method:
Another way to get the last inkjet out of your cartridge is to make sure the nozzles in the cartridge are clean. By blowing the nozzles with hot air, any ink blockage is diluted and allows the rest of the ink to escape.
Whenever you receive a notification that the ink has run out or is low, or that the output on the paper is streaked, faint (or even non-existent), you should consider this method as a way to squeeze enough ink to finish the document or at least the page.
To do this, remove the cartridge from the printer and identify where the ink comes out (it is easily recognizable by seeing coloured spots and what appears to be a circuit board on adhesive tape). It is at this stage that you should heat with your hairdryer for 2 to 3 minutes, in order to eliminate any blockage in the small nozzles of the cartridge.
When finished, replace the cartridge in your printer and continue with the document. You should now see a much better impression!
7. Use the printer at least once a week:
To prevent the ink cartridges from drying out, you can run the printer at least once a week for a test page. This will avoid drying your ink and keep your printer in good condition.
8. Black and white printing:
I personally print articles and recipes online and this little tweak helped me save on color ink. If you print something on the Internet and don’t really need it in color, select Black and White when printing. It also keeps in mind which banners and advertisements not relevant to your content would also be printed.
Most articles have a printer icon somewhere near the article title that helps you remove unwanted ads and banners, but there are still articles that don’t have this feature. For items that don’t have the printer icon, you can highlight only the text you want to print, then right-click and select Print. In this way, it only prints the content without any irrelevant advertising or images.
9. Cover the sensor:
some ink cartridges come with a chip that detects the ink levels. And most of the time, this chip sends out an empty cartridge warning too soon. In this case, it sometimes does not allow you to print, unless you change the cartridges. To resolve this issue, cover the chip sensor with black electrical tape. Take this, chip!
10. Use grayscale mode:
Another way to save ink is to select the Grayscale option. If you want to print something from the browser, right-click and pick Print. Go to “Print using the dialogue box”. In the pop-up window that opens, select your printer from the list and click the “Preferences” button. Go to the Color tab and find the “Grayscale” inspect box in the Color Options part of the pop-up window. Inspect the box and press the OK button. Continue printing.
11. Shake it up:
when your prints start to look faded, it’s not always because your cartridges are low. Sometimes this may be due to the fact that some of the ink has dried and clogs the nozzles. In addition to the hairdryer method, you can also try to turn the cartridge upside down and gently shake it.
However, it’s easy to shake it off, we just want the ink to peel off, not break the cartridge. Just because your prints are faded doesn’t mean your cartridges are empty. Some of the ink may clog the nozzle.
One way to remove the blockage is to gently shake the cartridge. Once you’ve done that, reinsert it into the printer. I hope the printing will start again normally.
12. Empty your ink cartridges better:
The cartridges are said to have a good amount of ink even after it indicates that it is low. You may even think that you are really running out when you start getting striped prints. The truth is that your print head just needs to be cleaned to fix it. You can run the print head cleaning function on your printer or clean the ink cartridge nozzles yourself with a damp, lint-free cloth.
When the ink cartridges remain unused for a few days, the ink tends to dry out. If your prints go bad after not printing for days, try removing the cartridges and shaking them well to move the ink that has collected inside. You can also use a hairdryer to remove any blockage from the cartridge nozzles. Another way to remove blockages is to use the paper towel method.
13. Pay Attention to Image Resolution:
You can expand the life of your ink cartridges by modifying the image resolution. Specifically, you want to lower the DPI – the lower the number, the less ink your printer will use. Go to the printer configuration and see what it is pre-programmed to print on. In some cases, it can be between 200 and 300 DPI, which is excessive for most documents.
14. Paper towel method:
Similar to the hairdryer method, the paper towel method also aims to remove dry ink from the nozzles to help the rest of the ink come out.
15. Avoid large, bold fonts and Change Fonts:
Large fonts and bold text require more ink, so save money by reducing the size of your text. Some ink-saving fonts to try are Arial and the new email service. To save even more, download Eco font, a font style that uses 20% less ink by including small white circles in each character.
Some online content uses bold and bold fonts that consume a lot of ink. You can fix this by copying the pasted article into Microsoft Word or Google Docs and then changing the fonts to something that doesn’t use a ton of ink. Believe it or not, but you can save ink by changing your font.
For example, you can use Times New Roman, Courier or Helvetica; all are known to use little ink. Remember that you can also configure the font at a smaller point!
16. Play around with your printer settings:
The printers were deliberately configured to consume ink before leaving the factory. Fortunately for us, this is a fairly easy change. Just update your printer’s default settings. To do this on a Windows computer, click Start> Printers> right-click your printer and select “Preferences”.
17. Ignore printer warnings:
The printer warnings have not been found to be very reliable. Various tests show how to send an incorrect message when there is still a considerable amount of ink left in the cartridges. The first rule is therefore not to blindly believe in your printer unless you make sure there is nothing left.
18. Use the print preview and print only what you need:
have you ever printed something from the Internet only to find that it didn’t fit the page? To avoid such wasted ink, you can press “Print Preview” before sending anything to print, and you can detect and correct any problem before the ink hits the paper.
you want to print an article or recipe from a website, but can you do without all the ads and photos that appear on the page? Go to printwhatyoulike.com, enter the URL of the page and you can remove these ink-consuming extras with a few clicks.
19. Check for obstructions:
have you stopped printing the cartridge as you are supposed to? Do you have streaks or spots on your page? Before throwing it away, make sure a clogged nozzle is not to blame. To confirm this, try running the print head cleaning function on your printer. This will remove any ink that has settled and dried on the print head nozzles for a long time between print jobs.
Conclusion:
This article definitely gives you a broader view about how to get more ink out of your cartridge or in other words how to save your printer ink, which is very important because the printer ink is more expensive than the cost of a printer. If you want to save your money than you will definitely try these tips and hopefully you will get advantage from them.