There may be times when the belt that moves your paper along inside your SG400, SG800 or even your Ricoh 3110/7100 printers can have stray ink on it. This may be from misalignment of paper, printing that continues even though a piece of paper was not pulled in from the tray, or even issues with your nozzles or print head.
Sometimes the issue is obvious. You’ll see lines in your prints. Maybe there are splotches on your transfer paper. There are even times when you won’t see anything wrong with the print, but spots and lines will show up after pressing.
Tools
- Printer
- Denatured alcohol
- Lint-free cloth
- Space to access the top and back of your printer
Step 1
Unplug your printer. Place the printer on a table or space where you can easily access the back and top panels. Have your lint-free cloth and denatured alcohol close by.
Step 2
Open remove the back panel of the printer. This will reveal the rollers used to pull paper from Tray 1 and the bypass tray. These rollers also move the belt.
Step 3
Open the top panel. Here, you will see the tubes that bring the ink from your cartridges to the print head. You want to be very careful with these and touch them as little as possible. You will also see the belt. It looks like black cellophane under the roller bar.
Step 4
Open your denatured alcohol. This can be purchased at most hardware stores or even Walmart. Wet your lint-free cloth. Then use the cloth to wipe down the belt inside the printer.
NOTE: You don’t want to soak the cloth, as you don’t want anything to drip inside the printer. Alcohol evaporates quickly, but you still don’t want it dripping inside your printer.
Step 5
Once the portion of the belt you can see has been wiped down, turn the rollers on the back of the printer to advance the belt. Though the rollers are difficult to move, you should be able to do this just with your fingers.
Step 6
Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you’ve wiped down your whole belt. Then let your printer air out and dry for at least one hour before attempting to print. Try a test print that uses little ink, such as a nozzle check, to see how well your cleaning worked.
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