Fixing My Epson Printer

My Epson printer has not been printing right for a while now.  Oh, it started out well enough, but then things started looking washed out and not quite the right color.  I changed ink cartridges, ran a print head alignment twenty times, performed a head cleaning eighty times and still nada.  It would work for a day then back to yucky.  So after a small amount of research, I decided that the print head needed cleaning.  But since Epson print heads are NOT REMOVABLE, it wasn't going to be easy.  Well, actually, it was.

First, I pressed the "change ink cartridge" button to move the print head out into the open. Then I just gave it a little push to reveal the pad on which the nozzles rest when the printer is off.  And I put Windex on those pads, using a straw.  The recommendation was "5 to 7 drops with a medicine or eye dropper".  I put a bit more on.  Then I removed the carttridges and swabbed the little feeder tubes with Windex and a Q-Tip.  I reinstalled the cartridges and then -- and this is important -- I turned the printer OFF (to park the print head on the Windexed pads) and went to bed. 

In the morning, I put fresh ink cartridges in and printed a test page.  A few yellow nozzles were not working correctly, but I'd read that doing too many head cleanings can exacerbate the problem I was having, so I just kept printing pages thick with graphics.  And after only a few pages, the print looked exactly as it should.

Yay for Windex!  And now I plan to turn my printer OFF every night so that it doesn't clog up my nozzles again.