Print Head Maintenance

Busy production schedules and the stress of daily business routines can easily overshadow any thoughts of performing regular maintenance on your Thermal Label Printer.  However, routine, simple maintenance can save you money by prolonging the life of your machine, and help you avoid pitfalls along the way.

Cleaning it regularly, checking for signs of wear and replacing parts as necessary are the best ways to ensure optimal print quality and consistent print performance. The print head is the most critical and sensitive component of a Thermal Printer. Without frequent cleaning and proper maintenance, it will produce less than desirable print quality that can cause production down time, wasted labels and the potentially major issue of fines and charge-backs from your customers who cannot scan your barcodes!

The majority of print quality problems result directly from improper use or neglect of the print head. Labeltronix recommends the following guidelines and precautions to ensure that your printheads continue to provide the best possible print quality:

• CLEAN your printhead regularly. Use cotton swabs* and Isopropyl Alcohol (recommend 90% - 99% concentrate, however common 70% will work just fine, too) to thoroughly clean the print element area of the printhead. Dirt, dust, adhesive, and ribbon/ink residue will build-up over time. Failure to clean these substances off of the print elements will cause the printhead to work much harder in transfering its energy, to create the image on the ribbon or label surface. A dirty printhead will burn out its print elements much faster, causing a much shorter printhead lifespan.
  
  Frequency of Cleaning

  • If printing Thermal Transfer (with a ribbon), you will want to clean the printhead every time you change the ribbon.
  • If printing Direct Thermal (no ribbon), you will want to clean the printhead every time you change a roll of labels. Direct Thermal label stock will leave much more debris, dust and adhesive residue on the printhead than if printing with a ribbon.

**Cleaning pens, cleaning cards and foam swabs are available and approved by most printer manufacturers.  However, you can achieve the same effect, at a fraction of the cost, by using  simple package of wooden-shaft cotton swabs. Cotton swabs are the softest and produce the lowest amount of friction against the printhead.

• NEVER touch or scrape the printhead with any metal object (including items made of very hard materials such as ceramic and other abrasives). Hard objects can scratch and destroy the printhead elements. Physical damage to printhead elements is permanent and will require the printhead to be replaced. This damage will result in the appearance of a sharp, straight, vertical void area in the printed image. It only takes one bad/damaged print element to render a barcode un-readable by the scanner. Multiple damaged or burnt-out elements will severely compromise the image’s overall quality. Knives, razor blades, screwdrivers and jewelry (rings and watches), are some of the more common items that can scrape against and damage printheads.  Think carefully about placing a printer in an area where there may be airborne metal dust, or abrasives that can settle on the printer or the labels and ribbons running through the printer.
  
   
• REPLACE wear parts when they need replacing – especially those parts critical to print quality such as the Platen Roller, Main Drive Belt and any worn parts which physically support the printhead alignment and balance. The printhead is designed to print accurately and evenly when its printing surface is also perfectly even and symmetrical. This “surface” is actually the center-point (or near-center) of the platen roller. The surface of the platen roller must be even; and free of any wear, tapering, pits or cuts. Platen rollers that are sliced, or have “chunks” cut out of them, will produce voids and blemishes in the print quality; adding unnecessary friction against the printhead. Worn or tapered rollers will cause increased friction, as well as excess strain on other parts of the printhead support mechanism.

If your printers are used heavily in “mission critical” applications, it is a good idea to maintain a stock of new printheads for these vital printers. Keeping a replacement printhead on hand for your mission critical printers is a good way to cut down on costly down-time.

Consider these questions when evaluating the importance of your printhead and printer:

• How much is your production time worth?
• How much money does it cost your business each day, each hour, if you cannot ship your products because you are unable to print the needed labels?