How to care for your printer

We’ve all had the printer jam with printer paper when we’re in the middle of a particularly large and time-sensitive print job and it’s only then that we stop to think about what an essential piece of office equipment the printer is. Follow these care tips for all printers and keep your printer running smoothly for as long as possible, saving you stress and time wasted at the copy shop.

All too often, an office will spend a good chunk of money on a printer only to forget entirely about cleaning and maintenance. As this is one of the more costly of office products it pays to keep up with cleaning and maintenance because even humble dust particles can affect a printer’s functioning. In fact, dust is one of the worst enemies of many pieces of electrical office equipment. Allow dust to collect on print heads and rollers and your copier paper is bound to clog up inside. You can buy dust covers for printers for when they’re not in use that will help.

When it comes to maintenance, most printers have a standard maintenance programme which you can access from the printer’s control menu and which runs through some printer actions which will help to unclog any blockages and allow the ink cartridges to work effectively. These maintenance programmes are helpful, but they do use quite a lot of toner so make sure you’ve got spares to hand.

If you carry out regular cleaning and maintenance of your printer, use quality printer paper and toner and take precautionary measures such as using a dust cover and you still encounter problems, then you’ll need to call the manufacturer and check the cost of repair. If you’re under warranty you should be covered for repair costs, especially if you can show you’ve followed these care tips.