Inkflow is very important when it comes to your edible prints. If your inks are not flowing into your printer as they should, your prints are already off before you even click print. One way to test out whether your inks are ready to work well with your printer and if your nozzles are functioning properly is to run a nozzle check. (Side note: It's very possible that the reason your prints are not coming out right may just be that your cartridges are low on ink, so be sure to take a look at them to see if they're low as that can be the entire reason behind your printing issues.) 

A nozzle check is a test print 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. If your images are coming out streaky, with missing colors, or are just completely off, running a nozzle check is a good starting point to help narrow down what your issue might be. Running a nozzle check on a regular sheet of copy paper (before printing on edible paper and wasting the sheets) can help you instantly know if you can start printing on your edible sheets right away or if you have some maintenance to do beforehand.

The printer used in the reel above is the Canon PIXMA TS702a which we carry in this Edible Ink Printer Bundle and is a model we use ourselves at our main office. You should be able to find the nozzle check option on your printer's display screen in the maintenance section of your printer's settings. If your printer model doesn’t have a display screen, just look up your printer model on Google and put “nozzle check” right after that, and you should find out how.

If your nozzle check print has missing lines or colors, it could just be that you haven’t used your printer for several days or weeks, and the prints reflect that. Since edible ink is a food product and therefore can/does dry out if not used for a while, it should not come as a surprise if that shows in the prints. You very likely may have to clean your printhead. We recommend checking out our 6 Tips to Maintain Your Edible Ink Printer to be a bit more sure about what you may need to do next.