Hewlett Packard (HP) is a very well-known multinational brand for electronic home and office products, it sells an award-winning series of laser printers, inkjet printers, and multifunction devices. Perhaps, it's the largest printer manufacturer along with others, Samsung Group and Xerox Corporation. It is very common if you use this brand's printers in your home and even at the Office. HP printers are built by experts and provide a consistent quality output, easy to use settings and cutting-edge features like mobile printing features and Wi-Fi network support. However, regardless of its amazing quality, it is crucial to maintaining it to get best out of it. Apart from having printer consumables like HP drum cartridges, HP toner etc., you must know how to clean HP Inkjet Printers print head to avoid clogging.

  • Why Clean HP Printer Regularly?
  • Cleaning HP Printer through Driver
  • Before Cleaning HP Printer print head manually
  • Three Main Parts of HP Inkjet Printer
  • Manual Cleaning of HP Printer Print Heads
    1. Step one: Removing, Cleaning and Reinstalling the Printhead
    2. Step two: Printer Resetting
    3. Step three: Replace the Printhead
  • Video : Printhead Cleaner Usage Instruction for HP

Why Clean HP Printer Regularly?

Regular cleaning of the HP printers tends to increase your product's life as well as save itself from all printer malfunctioning trouble that hinders your due task. Like every inkjet printer, HP printers are also prone to clogging at some point. Printhead clogging depreciates the image quality as the ink do not reach the paper and it ends up forming white stripes.

You must clean your printer print head the first time your printer clogs, otherwise, the ink builds up inside the print head, demanding more and more ink-consuming cleaning and at times it ends up ruining the print head.

Even though HP print heads are very easy to clean through its utility drivers but if your printer is having issues like color fading, streaking or missing text, then those drivers won't help. You need to clean it manually and require a good print head cleaning solution. Manual printer print head cleaning requires special care so that you do not damage the print head contacts or cartridge contacts.

This article covers HP printer print heads cleaning through automatic utility drivers and manually, both. As both cleaning methods are used for their own purposes, if your printer is new or its cartridges are filled and it's still not working, has ragged color bar, or its color bars are ragged with other colour and there are white lines on the color bar, then you first need to clean it through automatic utility drivers. If, it's not fixed then only move to manual cleaning.

Cleaning HP Printer through Driver

There are two very common and easy methods to clean the HP printer through drivers that are very easy to follow.

Method one: Print head Cleaning solution through Control Panel

To run a print head cleaning solution through the HP Printer control panel, then follow these steps;

  1. Install an A4 size, plain white paper into the printer tray.
  2. Press and hold the power button for 3 sec.
  3. Then, press the (X) button two times and the resume button, one time.
  4. In the end, release the power button.

Hopefully, it will fix the issues, otherwise, try the next method.

Method two: Print head cleaning Solution through HP Solution Center

To clean the HP printer print head through its HP solution center which is part of the software that comes with the printer itself, follow these steps;

  1. Go to the HP Solution Center.
  2. For Windows XP, go to Start, press All Programs, then HP and finally HP Solution Center.
  3. For Windows Vista, press the windows icon, press All Programs, then HP and finally the HP Solution Center.
  4. The HP solution center will open in the new window.
  5. Go to the settings, then press Printer Toolbox.
  6. When Toolbox opens, click on the Device services tab, and then Clean Printheads.
  7. To begin the cleaning process, click on Clean.
  8. Then, follow the instructions shown on the screen to complete the process.
  9. When you are done, you will see a test page printing.

If, your printer is still not working or you think your printer still needs proper print head cleaning solution, then go for the manual cleaning.

Before Cleaning HP Printer print head manually

There are two main points to keep in mind before cleaning the HP Printer Print head manually.

  1. Manual cleaning is only recommended when your printer is out of warranty, thus, make sure that your printer is out of warranty. To check;
    • Go to the HP warranty checking website, www.hp.com/go/warrantycheck
    • Type in your printer serial number and the name/model of your HP printer
    • Then press the submit button.
    • If your printer is still under warranty, then go to www.support.hp.com/checkwarranty
    • Contact and schedule the replacement or repair with HP support. However, if you live in the Asia Pacific, then you can go to their local service center to get your printer fixed.
  2. In case, you are out of warranty and you want to clean your printer manually, then you must have the material listed below:
    • Printers Jack-Printhead cleaner solution
      *You can buy from www.amazon.com.
    • a disposable container
    • lint-free cloth or anti-static wipes
    • distilled water
    • disposable gloves
    • paper towels

Tip: Cloth that comes with eyeglasses to clean or the coffee filter also works well to clean.

Three Main Parts of HP Inkjet Printer

If you are a HP Inkjet printer user, you must know it's crucial to clean the surface of the Inkjet printer, its inside and the slot of paper tray regularly as these three surround the print head. Therefore, this article is going to inform you about cleaning these three parts first. There are many HP printer users who mention on the technical support group that they struggle to find the easy how-to steps to avoid their print heads from clogging. To maintain your HP printer print heads, simply follow these steps mentioned below:

HP Inkjet Printers surface Cleaning – whenever you see any dust on the HP Inkjet printer's surface, just take out a paper towel or an antistatic wipe or you can just use a compressed air can to spray and clean the dust.
HP Inkjet Printer's insider Cleaning – in the HP Inkjet printer, when you open its top, you will see toner cartridges, simply take out the cartridges and use compressed air to remove any dust stuck on the printer tray. Also, take out the small paper pieces if you see any, at times these particles come off the paper jams. In the end, put the toner cartridges back to its place.
Paper Tray Slot Cleaning – this part of the printer also collects dust that is why it's recommended to clean it. For that, you need to take out the tray and same as printer surface cleaning, use a paper towel or an antistatic wipe or you can just use a compressed air can to spray and clean the dust.

These three steps are very basic rituals of print head cleaning solution that you need to follow every now and then to avoid print head clogging. However, if you have already been a victim of print head clogging, it's not too late to reduce the damage and save yourself from buying a new printer. Simply, follow the steps explained below;

Manual Cleaning of HP Printer Print Heads

To resolve the print head clogging issue or any other print heads issue, just follow the mentioned steps in presented manner.

Step one: Removing, Cleaning and Reinstalling the Printhead

  1. Turn on the printer by pressing the power button, if it's off.
  2. Open the cartridge top or access door.
  3. Takeout all the cartridges as shown in the figure below and put them on the paper towel, in the upside down position. Please make sure that the ink cartridges are not out of the printer for more than 30 minutes, as the air exposure damages the cartridges and the printer, both.

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  4. Then, in the print carriage, lift the hand of the latch until it stops and then remove the print head in the upward direction from its slot, as shown in the figure below.

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  5. Then, clean the print head with a dampened cloth in water and Printers Jack-Printhead cleaner solution mix to remove any access ink on the head. There are three areas to be cleaned, the plastic ramps on either side of nozzles, electrical contacts and the edge between the nozzles. Please do not force print head cleaning solution into the print head or touch the electrical contact area with a finger, only use the cleaning cloth and gently clean the nozzles as it can cause damage.

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    The figure above shows the print head cleaning areas and the steps to clean 'em are explained below:

    • First of all, stack up the paper towels in the disposable container and make sure it's a one-quarter inch or 6.5mm deep. On another hand, heat the water but don't boil. Do not use alcohol or other solvents.
    • Then, fill the container with warm water until its 2 inches deep and then dampen the lint-free cloth and wipe the electrical contact in the bottom to top direction. Do not go beyond the nozzles and electrical contacts. Keep cleaning until there is no ink.
    • Use a fresh cloth, lightly damp it and clean between the nozzle and remaining areas. However, instead of cleaning with the cloth, you can simply place the printhead in the disposable container filled with water and Printers Jack-Printhead cleaner solution mix of 50/50 ratio, in a way that bottom rests on the towel and leave it for 10 minutes. Then, remove it from the container and place it on another clean towel but with nozzles facing upwards.
    • Let it dry for 15 minutes at least, do not use air drier or any compressed air as it can cause print head clogging and it's not a proper print head cleaning solution. You can use the dry lint-free cloth to dry in order to proceed.
  6. To clean the electrical contacts that are inside the printer; lightly damp a clean lint-free cloth in distilled water and wipe the electrical contacts in the top to bottom direction. Try to use fresh and clean cloth and clean until there is no ink showing on the cleaning cloth.
  7. Wipe the electrical contacts again but with a dry cloth.
  8. After everything is dry and clean, return it to its place, pull up the latch handle in the carriage to install print head. Then, lower the latch to lock it properly because incorrect or misplaced latch can cause a problem.

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  9. Following the color guide on the print head (color shaped icon on the top of print head), reinstall each cartridge one by one into its place until everything is into its place(if you hear clicking sound it means its properly reinserted).

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  10. Lastly, shut the cartridge access door.

Step two: Printer Resetting

After cleaning the print head, the next step is to reset the printer to ensure that clogging is undone. Follow these steps to reset;

  1. First of all, load the A4 size plain paper in the tray.
  2. Press the power button, if the printer is off.
  3. Before proceeding, make sure that printer is idle.
  4. Disconnect the printer's power cord.
  5. Also, unplug it from the wall socket and wait for 60 seconds, at least.
  6. Plugged in the power cord in the wall socket as HP recommends to plug in power cord directly.
  7. Then, reconnect the cord to the printer rear.
  8. The printer will turn on automatically if it does, then you can turn it on.

In case, the ink system fails during resetting of the printer, you should take it to the service center. If the printer is perfectly fine, you can use automatic utility drivers mentioned above to set up the printer.

Step three: Replace the Printhead

This step is only needed when you have followed all the previous steps and issue is still resisting.

Please, do not remove the cartridges until and unless you have a new assembled print head on hand. As HP recommends, not to leave cartridges out of the printer for more than 30 minutes.

Printhead cleaning methods mentioned above are specifically for the HP printers but this article can be used to understand the unclogging of printer print heads in general.

Video : Printhead Cleaner Usage Instruction for HP


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