How to make your printer last longer

The printer is one of the most vital, and also, most used pieces of equipment in offices and home offices, homes, mall stores and almost in every business. Some people take this for granted, but after you calculate the amount of documents that are printed in an office just in a day, that�s when you realize that every office needs a good printer. However, it isn�t all about a good printer that can get the job done flawlessly, also it needs maintenance.

Some aspects to consider about your printer

Depending on how often your employees use it, the quality of your printer, the quality of the ink it uses and your maintenance schedule, the probabilities that your printer lasts years or even decades will be higher.

Imagine all the documents that are printed in an office just in a morning. Now, if you think about all the documents printed not only in a day but in a month, you will realize that you would have big problems without it.

Furthermore, Ink cartridges can be expensive, and they tend to run out of ink in the less anticipated moments.

Fortunately, there are a few ways you can prolong the lifetime of your printer and also make your ink cartridges last longer. In this article we have gathered a list of tips and tricks you apply to extend the life of your printer and also save some extra money by making ink cartridges last longer.

How to Extend the Life of your Printer

Use only high-quality paper

This is one of the best things you can do in terms of extending the life of a printer. By doing this, you ensure not only that paper will not get stuck in the printer and damage it, but also that the ink adheres correctly to the paper without bleeding the paper.

Low-quality paper tends to get ripped and also cause ink problems that can be disastrous in long-term.

Use only ink cartridges of excellent quality

Using off-brand ink cartridges is common practice in offices due to their low cost. This complemented with using poor quality paper can be a detrimental combination.

The usage of high-quality consumables on a printer, specially ink cartridges manufactured by officially approved companies, assures that there are less chances that the ink will leak into the printer or damage the print heads.

Find a provider for regular service

The benefits of a well-maintained printer are obvious. If you contract service personnel and schedule maintenance for your printer. They can make repairs, clean out the device and make sure that there are no issues that can damage your printer. Hiring someone to do the maintenance and look for issues that can cause problems, will definitely extend your printer�s life.

Train your employees on how to use the printer

This tip is related to personnel training. We all have seen, or even been, that employee that doesn�t know how to use the office printer or what settings to use, consequently causing problems to the device.

By training your personnel on how to use the printer, you will assure that they will know which features to use, how to use them correctly and how to make the most of the device. Therefore, increasing the life of your printer, because once your employees know how to correctly use the printer, they will generate fewer print jobs.

Proof before you print anything

Printing Prior to printing any document, take your time to edit and proof that the work has been done correctly.

Maintain Printer Security

What this tip means is that updating the firmware every time is needed, maintaining network security and making sure that the printer can�t be reached by hackers is a one of the ways you can extend your printer�s life.

Maintaining the device�s security measures will guarantee you that hackers won�t access remotely to the device. Otherwise, they can damage it, or even worse, make it inoperable.

Ignore out-of-ink warnings

When your printer warns you that your ink cartridges are getting low on ink, ignore this warning for a while instead of going right off the bat to the store for new ones. It has been found by several PC blogs and magazines that ink cartridges still have from 9 to almost 50 percent of their ink when these messages show up.

Use �regular�, small size fonts

If you reduce the size of texts and only size up when necessary you will be saving more ink from your cartridges. Larger and bolder fonts use more ink than smaller fonts. Use �regular� size fonts instead of bold when you can, and also use smaller font sizes.

Adjust your printer settings

Default settings of printers waste an immeasurable amount of ink that you can save. There are a few preferences you can change to save ink, like:

• Setting the print quality to �draft�.
• Choosing �print in grayscale�.
• On �document options� choose to print in multiple pages per sheet.

Maintain your cartridges

Cartridges, as well as printers, require maintenance. But a different type of maintenance. Here are a few things that you can in order to maintain your cartridges and assure that ink don�t get dry, and other issues:

• Store cartridges when they are not being used: By doing this you will preserve the ink of the cartridges when they are not being used. All you have to do is remove them from your printer and store them in airtight plastic bags.
• Store cartridges at room temperature: Ink dries out faster if it is exposed to incredibly hot or cold temperatures. To avoid this, you have to store at a moderate room temperature.
• Humidify cartridges regularly: In order to prevent ink from getting clogged, what you can do is to wipe them up with a damp towel to clean up any ink spill. After you do this, never forget to dry the cartridge before reinserting it.

If you do the tips that we have shown you above, we assure you that you will maintain your office�s main investment:The printer. Also, you will prolong the life of its cartridges and also save a huge amount of money offices spend each year on buying new printers.