Zebra Printer Preventative Maintenance

The Benefits of Doing Preventative Maintenance on Your Zebra Printers
by Timmy Thermal

We’ve written extensively about ways that you can take care of your Zebra printers in past blogs, like how to clean your printhead, New Year’s printer resolutions to extend the life of your printer, renewing your printer repair contracts, and more, but why is regular printer maintenance so important? The short of it is that regular maintenance of your Zebra printers, or any printers for that matter, extends the life of your printer, much the same way that regular maintenance of a car, like oil and tire changes, increases the lifetime of the vehicle. But, let’s get into some details about maintaining your printer and their benefits.
As we’ve said before, cleaning your printhead is important in ensuring a high quality print job and ensuring that residue isn’t being left behind in the machine. Residue buildup is a large problem that is the result of improper printer maintenance and can lead to damaging effects that may render your printer useless if not tended to. This is not to mention how costly a new printhead can be.
Other things that should be checked on when cleaning your printhead include the ribbon or the roll of labels, depending on what type of printer you have (thermal transfer or direct thermal, respectively). These should be changed as needed, but serve as a good indicator of when the printhead needs cleaning.
By doing these certain things you can really extend the life of your Zebra printer, but beyond that you’ll save money on repairs and replacements. As I said, the printhead can be costly, but any one of these things will add up over time in terms of replacement and repair costs. Multiply that by how many printers your business is operating and you’ve got a costly, but unnecessary expense on your hands.
Don’t be left out in the cold with broken printers or printers in need of repair. Take the time to perform these small maintenance tips on your Zebra printers yourself. You’ll be saving money and reducing downtime by spending minutes on maintenance instead of days on repairs and/or replacements.
As always, if you do find yourself out in the cold (like Luke Skywalker on Hoth) then feel free to give us a call at (800) MIDCOM-4 Service (643-2664) or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. We have daily updates on the industrial printing industry, tips for owning and operating your printers and more!

Past articles in series:
Warranties and Zebra Printer Repair
Zebra Printer Support End
Zebra Printer Common Issues