I was getting some small streaks on my prints and after running the cleaning routine they disappeared. Curious, I opened the top cover and was somewhat horrified to see the foam strip completely saturated with ink.
I gently removed it and began blotting it with rags to remove the residue. Then I used q-tips to clean the area it covers. This was the first time I had opened the cover in the year I have had the printer. I have made well over 1500 prints (mostly 13x19 and 17x22) in the past year, consuming about 60 ink cartridges in preparation for a retrospective exhibit in January.
The technician told be the foam strip sits atop the waste cartridge, and the saturation of the foam strip was completely normal. He said that abnormal would be indicated by streaks on the BACK of the print.
He also told me that my little ritual of blotting the foam strip was unnecessary. The one mistake I make that causes excessive consumption of ink is to forget to change the printer settings when I change paper types. The most egregious error is leaving it set on 'heavyweight art paper' when I'm actually printing on glossy stock.
The one piece of info I passed along to him that he said was new to him was the propensity for clogging of the blue and cyan cartridges. I generally have to clean only them about once every six weeks when I notice an inch wide light streak on the right side of the paper. Selective cleaning of the nozzles wastes less ink.
Also, if you haven’t noticed yet, the CO cartridge exhausts twice as fast as any of the others. I always order them two at a time.
Hope this helps/.
