Printer problems.

I've got a Kodak esp3.2s printer, had it a while but to be honest it gets used rarely.
Which basically means everytime I try to use it the ink has dried up and it says it needs replacing.

Anyway at vast expense I replaced both black and colour cartridges, but its still not printing right, the prints I'm getting are pretty much unuseable.

Colours are wrong, and blurred, and even black comes out brown and faded when printing text.
I'm guessing the thing is clogged up with old ink, maybe?

Any ideas?
Thanks

 

Hi,

Have had a similar experience with our little inkjet as we normally use a mono laser printer.

They really need to be printed on about one or twice a month otherwise they dry out as you say.

Sometimes following the makers head cleaning and alignment routine will cure the problem, but ours did not.

Found several ytubes showing how to use warm water and kitchen towel to clean the stuck cartridges and to our surprise it worked !


If yours is still blocked even with new cartridges no idea how to fix that, though the price of new similar printers are so cheap, often cheaper than new cartridges, it might be worth getting a new one ? many now have wifi connection and software compatible with W10

The only catch with a new one is that the cartridges they come with are Starter ones with a limited amount of ink, meaning you soon have to buy replacements, though have found Wilkos own brand a lot cheaper and work well.

All-in-one printers Inkjet printers Printers | Argos

 

I cant remember if the kodak prints through a screen below the cartridge or if the print head is part of the ink cartridge. If its through a screen then give that a clean too. Run the head cleaning and alignment on the printer which may help.

As above, inkjets need to be used to keep the ink from drying up.

We moved away from kodak some years ago as the colour cartridge contains all three colours so once one is used, the whole cartridge is replaced.

I had an Epson which had a print head that was separate from the inks but clogged all the time. I bought some inkjet head cleaner which was applied to the head to dissolve the dried ink and fixed the problem.

 

Thanks I'll try the water and paper towel method first @ricky101

I did have an HP one before this that worked reasonably well for a long time, with similar intermittent use.
This Kodak one is not as good, even though it is slightly more advanced.

 

Tried the water clean up on the cartridges, then tried copying a photo, colours just came out wrong, brown was orange etc.

It does, I believe print through a screen as you say @andrews , I gave that a dampening as well.

I might just get a new cheapo one.

 

It'll be the screen that's gunked up if they are new cartridges