Sometimes I don't use my CISS and printer potty equipt Epson Stylus Photo 1400 for a few weeks at a time. Everytime I go to use it won't work properly until I've cleaned it numerous times. I hate printers.
To try and elevate this I have setup a cronjob on linux to send the clean command to the printer once a week in the hopes that it will be primed and ready for whenever I need it.
Please note that excessive cleaning of this printer will result in the Waste Ink counter maxing out which will make your printer unusable without a reset. See here
The cronjob is setup on a linux server and my printer is attached to a windows box so samba is used to copy the file to the windows host
/usr/sbin/clean_printer.sh
#!/bin/sh smbclient //host/printer -A /root/.smbcredentials -c "print /etc/clean_epson_photo_1400_head.spl"
/root/.smbcredentials
username=smb username password=smbpassword
/etc/clean_epson_photo_1400_head.spl
This file was captured from the windows print queue. It sends the command to clean the heads and is attached below. It may work with other models but this is untested. On Windows you could presumably send this file to the printer as a scheduled job somehow.
Crontab line - Every Wednesday morning at 8AM clean the printer
0 8 * * 3 /usr/sbin/clean_printer.sh
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Matt.