Let's talk about maintaining your Canon printer for edible printing. Anyone who uses edible ink printers in their edible decorating process should have these tips on hand to make the most out of their printer. How often should you maintain it? How should you go about doing it? Here's what we recommend to keep your printer workflow seamless and to keep potential issues at bay.
1. TURN IT ON AND OFF DAILY TO KEEP IT FROM STAYING COMPLETELY IDLE.
If you use your printer several times a week, that's great. However, on the days you don't use it, we highly recommend to turn it on and off as that will cause the printer's insides to run a brief cleaning cycle and prevent cartridges from drying out on the printhead.
2. IF YOU WON'T BE USING YOUR PRINTER MULTIPLE TIMES A WEEK, REMOVE THE CARTRIDGES AND CLEAN THE PRINTHEAD.
Leaving the printer idle and not working for extended periods (especially with the inks installed in it) is not good for the printhead. If you're heading out of town, not going to be using your printer for a few days, or just don't use your printer multiple times a week in general, it is highly recommended that you:
✅ Remove the cartridges and place them back into the black clips they came in.
✅ Remove the printhead and clean it using our Printhead Cleaning Kit.
✅ Once you're back and ready to get printing again, just reinstall the printhead and the cartridges. Note: The first thing you should do after reinstalling the cartridges and the printhead is a nozzle check. If the nozzle check does not come out well, then you should instantly perform a printhead cleaning through the printer's menu, which brings us to our next tip below.
3. ARE YOU FACING SOME INKFLOW ISSUES? HAVE YOUR PRINTER DO A CLEANING.
Always print a nozzle check on regular copy paper before printing on edible paper (to test inkflow) so that you don't accidentally waste any edible sheets. A nozzle check is a test print (shown above) that you can usually run from your printer’s display panel to make sure your Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black ink colors flow well inside the printer. To run a nozzle check for your specific printer model, please check your printer manual or search up how to run a nozzle check for your printer model online.
If you print a nozzle check and it looks off, streaky, or nothing like the image above, it's time to clean your printhead. Start by going to your printer's display panel and locating the maintenance menu to have the printer run a printhead cleaning cycle. To get your printer run a cleaning for your specific model, please check your printer manual or search up how to do a cleaning for your printer model online. After your printer's cleaning cycle is done, run a nozzle check to see if your colors are coming out correctly. If the colors are still off, go back into the printer's maintenance menu, but this time select "deep cleaning." Run another nozzle check to see how the colors are showing. If the deep cleaning still does not work, it's likely time to manually take out your printhead to clean it as explained in the next tip.
4. MANUALLY CLEAN YOUR PRINTHEAD ONCE A WEEK IF YOU'RE PRINTING SEVERAL TIMES A WEEK.
We recommend that you perform a manual printhead cleaning using a food-safe printhead cleaning solution (as shown here) at least once a week if the printer get used several times a week. This will make sure that the ink can always flow smoothly and the nozzles in your printhead are not clogged. The longer you have your printer in use without cleaning the printhead, the more ink residue will build up in the nozzles of the printhead over time; so building the habit of manually cleaning the printhead regularly will go a long way in keeping your printer running smoothly.
5. DON'T REFILL YOUR CARTRIDGES MORE THAN 3 TIMES.
If you refill your cartridges, please make sure to not refill them more than 3 times. After 3 refills, you should get a new set of cartridges. The outlet port of the cartridges wears out over time and will cause print quality issues at some point, which is why we recommend refilling them only up to 3 times in order to ensure high print quality.
