Digital BW, The Print

Hi All,

Wanted to share with you a quick solution I found to printer head clogs.
My Epson E3000 had not been used in 7 months. The black position was 
the worst with half of the nozzles clogged. Two days of cleaning cycles 
did little....

The Solution :
I cut a piece of MrClean MagicEraser foam with a sharp kitchen knife to 
about 1/4" x 3/4" x 6" long. It cuts as easy as stale bread, no crumbs 
or flakes of any kind. 
Soaked it a bit with alcohol and put it in the printing track. 
Disengaged the head from its parking position and dragged the heads 
over the foam pad... removed the pad, blotted it with some paper towels 
to remove the ink ( almost ALL comes out ! ) and then again without the 
alcohol.

The head clogs are gone - even the misdirected nozzles are fine.

This may be the quick solution to head clogging.

The material contains no abrasive and remains intact. 
It is actually white melamine foam.

FYI : From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The microfine structure of melamine foam, creating very hard, tiny 
fibres which scour some surfaces clean.Melamine foam is a foam-like 
material consisting of a formaldehyde-melamine-sodium bisulfite 
copolymer. The foam, because of its microporous properties, may remove 
otherwise "uncleanable" external markings from relatively smooth 
surfaces. For example, it can remove crayon, magic marker, and grease 
from painted walls, wood finishings, and grime from hub caps.

The open cell foam is not only microporous, but its polymeric substance 
is also extremely hard, meaning that it works like sandpaper but on a 
smaller scale, getting into tiny grooves and pits in the subject being 
cleaned. On a larger scale, the material feels soft. Because the 
bubbles interconnect, its structure is more like a maze of fibreglass 
strands than like the array of separate bubbles in, for example, 
styrofoam.

The substance needs to be dampened to work properly. It does break down 
rather rapidly, so a given block of foam generally lasts only a single 
intensive scrubbing session, though it can be used repeatedly for much 
smaller marks.



Regards,
Alex
Orlando Fl