How To Properly Align Printer Heads To Maximize Print Quality

2010-10-16

Printer quality is something you pay for when you buy your printer, but the printer must be properly maintained if you are to keep up the print quality over time. Print jobs are highly malleable and ink is expensive. So it is a smart policy to keep your printer heads properly aligned at all times.

Printer alignment falls off balance over time. This causes your documents to lose the full print. You can notice this with regular typeface, but you notice it very much when you are working with colors and photographs. Alignment should be done every time you put new ink into your printer. It is a good policy, but you should probably check on your printer heads more often than you replace your ink.

It is always a convenient time to do the printer alignment when you are replacing your ink. To do so, lift up the panel on the back or on the top of the printer. Whenever you are doing any work on your printer, like replacing ink cartridges, make sure it is unplugged from the electrical socket to avoid unpleasant surprises. But once you are ready to do the alignment, you must have the printer turned on and ready to churn out paper.

To initiate the process, look for your printer icon on your desktop or in your programs. Look for printer maintenance or print services. Alternatively, you can go to the document you want to print and go to the print screen, and click on the maintenance tab. There will be a clear option to align your printer cartridges. Your printer will now start printing a test page.

Test pages will show you a couple of different tests, asking you to choose the appropriate print out of a group. The vertical test pattern is the one with several boxes. What you are looking for in the vertical test is the box that is filled in the best. Don't choose the boxes that have gaps and lines, just choose the one that is filled completely with ink. The horizontal test pattern is the one with the blue rectangles running down the page. There are two rectangles pairing up and down the page. You will notice there is a line in between each pair of rectangles. Choose the one that does not appear to have a line in between. The line is there, but it is very faint.

Your printer quality will benefit greatly by performing this routine maintenance on your printer heads. It only takes a few minutes each time, but can be more effective and much cheaper than just replacing the ink cartridges every time your prints start to seem a bit dull.