Tips: Maintaining The Dot Matrix Printer Head

The average life span for a dot matrix printhead is about 200 million characters. Assuming in the event that they print a full page of A4 paper (60 lines with 80 characters per line), it will print a total of 4800 characters per page. That means the printhead can print a total of 4200 pages before it will start to fail. Bear in mind that not every page contains 4800 printed characters. So the actual pages before it fails are over 4200 pages.

Ways to take care of a print head

1. Do not use a low quality printer ribbon. It might be cheap but it will certainly destroy your printhead in a long run. An original ribbon is impregnated with special ink & oil, which will oil the printhead pin wires in the coursework of printing & the textile material in the ribbon are made by special technologies where else the compatibles does not have quality control over the type of textile, ink & oil.

2. Know when to fine-tune your print ribbon.

When printing starts, the quantity of ink & oil will keep decreasing & quality of printing will gradually decline. When quality reduces below a positive limit, the ribbon will start to wear (to threads). When this happens, the fine textile fiber mix with cellulose filaments from the paper & forms a dark grey dust. This signals the time to fine-tune to a used ribbon. Otherwise, the dust residue will clog the printhead & will reduce the life span of it. Do not reuse or re-ink old ribbon!

3. Printhead positioning & gap.

Try to look for a lever for printhead positioning. Normally for Epson printers, it is located at the right side of the printer, marked -1, 0, 1, 2,3,4,5, 6 or 7. As for Panasonic printers, it is usually located at the left side of the printer, marked Head Gap 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6. You need to fine-tune this gap in correspondence with the number of printed copies. Fine-tune the head position for:

 1. When you use copy

2. When you use copies

3. When you use copies & so on....

A wrong correspondence between head gap with the number of printed copies will wear off the printhead pin wires & shorten it is lifespan. In my printhead repair guide e-book, there is a chapter on how to re-adjust the printhead gap by hand on the its positioning & gap in the event that they are misaligned.

4. Ribbon Mask.

Remove the printhead from the printer. Check if the ribbon mask is in lovely condition. If it is not, fine-tune the ribbon mask. A defective ribbon mask sometimes may not only make the printing dirty but also will spoil the ribbon threads. A standard warranty for a printer is year. This warranty does not always include the printhead. The reason is they don't know in case you use the original ribbon. Even in case you are purchasing a used printhead, no reseller will require giving you a warranty.

Too bad there are lots of dot matrix users who are unaware of how to take care of their printer the printhead.