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Printer ink — turn the printer off with its own button

Printer ink

Save printer ink: shut the printer off with its own power button, not a power strip, so it can park and cap the printhead before it sleeps.

Printer ink: turn the printer off with its own button (related household photo)
Photo: Snewkirk7953 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

A lot of wasted printer ink starts with how the printer gets turned off. Inkjets park and cap the printhead when you use their own power button; cutting power at the strip can leave the head uncapped to dry out.

Shut down so the printer can cap the printhead

  1. Press the printer’s own power button and wait for the carriage to slide home and the lights to go dark.
  2. Only then switch off the power strip or unplug, if you do that at all.
  3. If the printer was cut off at the strip before, run one nozzle check next time instead of jumping straight to a cleaning cycle.

Stop there. One proper shutdown habit saves more printer ink than extra cleaning cycles do.

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