Printer Cleaning Kit for Brother MFC DCP Printers - 5 oz | Easy to use kit to Clear Printer nozzles

UPDATE As noted below, this product worked well for us. However, it can't make an old printer young. Besides clogged heads, there are several parts on an older printer that can go bad, or get fouled, or otherwise go wrong. I think we ran into that fact, soon after writing that earlier review. So, it was great at first, but we probably only got a few weeks of normal printing before it started going bad again. At that point, cleaning with this product did not help anymore. Clearly the printer needed more fixing or maintenance than we could do, and given its age, there was no point even dreaming about repair. At present it is relegated to scanning only and we had to buy a new (laser) printer. I'd still recommend this cleaning kit, though, because it does work. And your printer may not have the other issues we ran into, especially if it is younger. Just keep expectations in perspective. ----- ORIGINAL REVIEW This kit worked well on a Brother MFC J-6920DW. Recently, in the middle of a project it suddenly stopped printing any color. Several cycles of head cleaning and test prints emptied the ink but did not help. Replacing all four cartridges did not help. Internet searches came up with various solutions, one with canned air. That did nothing for us but make a huge mess. I do not recommend it! Eventually I found this kit and others like it. The reviews, and the vendor’s helpful hints and video (and guarantee) made us choose this. Here are the tips that helped make it work for us, on this model printer. 1) Use the long tube not the short one. Besides needing it for the cleaning, you will also need this tube to load the syringe with cleaning fluid, since the syringe won’t fit in the bottle. The tube is a tight fit onto the syringe, which is a good thing. Be patient. 2) Warm up the whole bottle of fluid, not just the syringe. That way you can leave the tube on the syringe and skip using the cap; plus, if you need to reload, the fluid is already warm. 3) On this printer the clearance is tight, and it will be hard to mount the cleaning tube onto the printer ink fittings using your fingers. Use long-nose pliers or similar tool to hold the end of the flexible tube and push it well onto each of the printer’s ink intake fittings. It will be a tight fit – which is good, it will prevent leaks. Again, be patient. 4) The kit included “blotter paper” but no instructions for it. We just used paper towel, two layers folded, under the printer head. This made a tight fit when sliding the print head over it, but soaked up all the ink and fluid. It might be better to use one layer folded, to give the head more clearance even if it might leave a little cleanup afterward. You want to avoid damaging the head and nozzles! 5) I moved the head a couple of inches a little after cleaning each color, over a clean section of paper. Besides keeping one spot on the towel from over-saturating, this also made it easier to see when each color ink was being successfully flushed out. 6) I removed all four cartridges before starting, but did not bother cleaning the black ink tube since it had been working okay. This was a gamble, but turned out to be correct in our situation. 7) I cleaned out the entire cartridge area, especially drying any remaining ink or fluid, before reinserting the cartridges. 8) Right after reinstalling the ink, I did a test print, and saw color again. After that, I ran three regular cleaning cycles and test prints. The coverage actually decreased at first, which I think was fluid or air being purged from the lines, but then improved again and by the third round the test print was normal. 9) Checking it a day later, I think I notice a couple of recurring blank squares in the test prints – out of the many hundreds in the pattern. It does not affect the quality of actual prints somehow, which is why I don’t care. And compared to having no color at all, this is fantastic. If I were to do this again I might change out the paper after one pass, and do each tube again. But this is probably unnecessary if you have a newer machine than ours. Overall, I found this process straightforward and very successful. There were no huge surprises and – so far – the result has been as good as I’d hoped. Users who are not accustomed to tinkering or fixing things might not find it as “easy” as I did, but if they trust the instructions and take their time, they should be okay. We are very satisfied and relieved. We recommended this kit if you have similar symptoms on a similar printer.

This was an effective cleaning kit for my stopped up MFC-J470DW printer. Bought it used and it printed NOTHING. Multiple cleanings with new cartridges didn't even print on spot on the paper. Per the seller, it had not been used for a long time and was stored with cartridges in it (Arrived with cartridges about 1/2 full). I followed the instructions I found online on how to get the print head out of the home/locked position. Put a rolled up paper towel 'pad' under the print head and proceeded to SLOWLY put the cleaning fluid through the lines. Important to cycle the syringe forward and back to dissolve and move any clogs in the lines. Put the cartridges back in and tried a couple print quality attempts. Actually started to get small amts of color and black dots on the paper. Repeated the process two more times. I really didn't get the 'flood' of cleaning fluid the online videos showed. The paper towel was soaked with diluted ink coming out of the print head. Third cleaning resulted in almost perfect printing so I did two cleaning cycles from the printer control panel. Very good print quality. It did eat up almost a full set of cartridges (still in the printer now) but a small price to pay for a fully functional printer.

Does what it is intended to do.. Everything you need is in the kit...almost.. Kit comes with two sheets of blotter paper, which isn't really enough, if you're printer is like mine and VERY clogged.. But, considering the price of the kit, it's understandable... I used the square paper towels you find at industrial supply houses.. Take the square, which is folded to like 4 layers thick, and without unfolding it, just cut it into strips.. Caveats/Lessons Learned: A. Make sure the blotter paper/paper towels are wide enough to contain all the mess..Don't cut them too narrow.. B. IF (like me) you have to do the "make it print, then pull the plug during the printing process" routine, to get access to the print head, REMOVE the partially printed sheet of paper, otherwise, the ink soaks into and across the blotter paper and soaks the printed sheet, turning it into MUSH that's hard to remove.. C. Once the print head has moved away from the parking area, you can freely move it back and forth, obviously with the printer's power turned off..I didn't, thinking it was still under tension, but it's not. D. Don't get ahead of yourself-Concentrate on ONE color at a time..There's plenty of cleaning solution.. E. TAKE PRECAUTIONS-Take the printer to the garage or put plastic over the table you are working on..Ink tends to get everywhere-Esp when you realize the blotter paper has totally soaked through on the first application and you go to yank it out, and it's soaking wet with ink and drips everywhere...Ooops! F. Ensure you can access the printer from all sides...Mine is a BIG (edited) printer and weighs close to 30 pounds...Or feels like it at least...So it's important to not have to constantly pick it up to access it from all sides...Put it in the center of a table you can walk around.. G. WEAR THE GLOVES-Or be prepared to have ink stained hands...They included them for a reason after all! H. HEAT-IT IS necessary to heat up the cleaning solution AND the tubing...It's flexible/rubbery tubing, but even so, the diameter is perfectly sized for the syringe nozzle and the printer ink tube...Which means it can be a struggle to get it on unless the tubing is as soft as possible, but even then....This is not a bad thing as you want as tight a fit as possible... I. BE AMAZED-With just how much ink is going to come out...Clearly, it is ink AND solution, so it is very "watery" and that's why it soaks through the blotter paper quickly..I also used well over 12 mils on one color, which is of course a big part of the reason it soaked through the paper... J. Might as well-You might as well take the extra time to clean the area where the cartridges go as well...There's also two areas on either extreme end of the carriage...Basically sponges, where I believe the print head goes to sort of squeegee off the color it just printed with before switching colors-That one is on the far left, and there's another one on the far right, where the head parks, to catch drips/for the same purpose as the left hand one...So those areas can get a bit "inky".. K. On my brother printer at least, some of the white plastic "trim/cover" pieces will come up and snap back in...So you can carefully remove one or two of them if it helps and if you're handy, can remove all of them, but it involves removing screws-Take a photo first before removing anything so you can check to see how they were placed originally.. L. LET IT DRY!-DO NOT use the printer until it is completely dry-As suggested in the instructions, use a hair dryer to dry it, if necessary, or just leave it overnight to dry naturally-This assumes though that you've cleaned it as well as you can first...You can use rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball/Q-tip™ to clean up ink spills... M. Protect Everything and have a trash CAN ready right next to the printer-So as you remove the soaked/dripping blotter paper, you can toss it without it dripping everywhere as you try to drop it in the trash, as naturally, you'll miss and it'll hit the floor and possibly stain it..Don't rely on just a bag, because you will surely fumble with getting it open and drip ink all over the place-That's why you need a can so the bag stays open...Simple thing, but it can be the difference between making a mess and not... N. SWITCH TO A LASER PRINTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've had nothing but inkjets my entire life, going back to the Canon BubbleJet printers in the 90's and I've had nothing but problems with them...Almost always related to ink, and almost always related to color ink, once I actually could afford a color inkjet printer.. Only problem with a COLOR laser printer is they don't do photos, as far as I know, but do graphs, etc just fine... I was thinking that maybe Epson's new "ink tank" printers might solve this issue, but as long as the printer is pushing ink through a print head, the problem will persist, unless you are printing everyday... So my advice is to use this kit, then SELL that *&(*&( printer and start using a print service to print photos...! Especially nowadays, unless you are doing reports or handouts, most of us never even NEED a printer anyway.. A BIG P.S. Brother and other manufacturers purposely make it difficult or IMPOSSIBLE to print at all if ONE of your colors is out or even too low...SO you can be out of ONE color and not even be able to print text using the black cartridge, which is generally bigger and lasts longer AND isn't prone to clogging as it's used far more often than color... ALSO-In attempting to clean this printer using the cleaning program on-board, I wiped out most of my brand new color cartridges-So I'd recommend not running a cleaning cycle more than twice... You can also NOT clean individual colors, at least on this printer-It's either a black only, or all color cycle... Will update once I determine if the process was successful or not..... IF it doesn't work for you, don't blame the kit...It's a well thought out and 95% complete kit...But some printers may just be stubborn and have too much dried ink that perhaps can't be washed away with even 2 or 3 cleanings.. Only change I'd say they might be able to make is if there was a way to put a TRAY under the print head to catch more ink and not be reliant on paper that can soak through and beyond... And yes, this MAY have happened because I used too much solution too quickly...You might want to just do 4 mils at a time, then wait for all the ink to dry before doing it again...BUT, that can take a LONG TIME.. Only other problem I foresee is you have to do ALL the colors BEFORE turning the printer back on......THEN, if it's still clogged, you have to start all over again..... ALSO: IF your printer was say less than $100 or even less than $50, this procedure is probably a waste of your time...As you can just go buy a new printer..Mine cost $300, so I feel it is worth doing....But if it was one of those $29 WM specials, I'd not waste my time...I'd just add another printer to the landfill...Shame on me! :0 PRINTHEAD HOSPITAL PEEPS: IS it possible to take OEM printer cartridges...And clean them thoroughly of ink and then refill the cartridge with cleaning solution? In other words, to then use the cleaner filled cartridge in the printer for the cleaning cycle, so as to not waste ink? I'd assume that would be cheaper than having to build oem-specced/purpose built cleaning cartridges.. ALSO-Is there a way to take OLD cartridges that are "empty" and inject your cleaning solution into them and use them to clean the printhead? Meaning, can individual users do this? UPDATE YEARS LATER: In the end, I just got pissed and destroyed the printer anyway! ;) So the whole cleaning process was a waste of time..Then I just did without a printer for years...It's funny how rarely you actually need one anyway...I think the cheap one I bought has been turned off for almost a year already...

Even though this was ultimately unable to resurrect my clogged print head, it's still a 5-star experience for one simple reason: customer service. First, the product itself: It arrived virtually instantly in a compact little envelope that easily fit in my mailbox. The instructions were clear, but there's also a video you can easily find online to help guide you along. It's a little bit of a production -- at least for me -- getting the plastic tubing onto the ink port, but that's most likely do a combination of poor lighting and the magenta port being inconveniently placed. Still, a stiffer piece of tubing would have made life marginally easier. In any event, there were no major problems injecting the fluid, but there was ultimately no joy after multiple applications (including an overnight one as recommended in the instructions). Still, for $20, it was worth the chance to try to avoid buying a new printer. For what it's worth, I don't think the failure is due to any deficiency with the kit; the print head was just too far gone. And now, the reason this is a 5-star review: After the purchase, the person behind the product took it upon himself to reach out with a follow-up email to see how I was getting along. When I mentioned that it hadn't worked, he went on to suggest some alternatives. Whenever I'd update him, I'd get an extremely fast and informative response. When it finally became clear that we were out of options, he then offered me a $15 refund on the $20 purchase, which took me by surprise. Again, at no point did I feel like the kit was faulty or not what I ordered. I know that it can work, since I applied it to my black ink line with some success. The black ink wasn't fully clogged, but has been uneven in its performance. After using the kit, there's been a definite improvement. It's just the magenta that refuses to come back. Do I wish my printer was back to 100%? Sure. But I couldn't have asked for a better experience with a vendor.

looks like a great product but will not work on Brother MFC-J1205w. there isn't a way to get to the print head without complete disassembly of the printer and secondly the ink ports wouldn't take any fluid to allow a flush even with no access to the print head. Just sharing so others dont waste their money.

Followed the instructions exactly and it did not work on my brother MFC-J880DW after two tries. After a few days I lost the cleaning solution bottle so I thought what the heck, don't have anything to loose so I tried the same procedure using ordinary window cleaner (since the cleaning solution smells more or less like window cleaner). Still no luck. After a few more days, and shopping for new a new printer, I tried one more last-ditch effort using straight, undiluted 70% warmed-up isopropyl alcohol following the same procedure as before, only this time it worked!! After cleaning with alcohol I ran a few test prints of the solid-color PDFs referenced in the kit (you can find these test prints easily on your own) to get the ink flowing. Seems my print head had an especially bad clog (maybe since I was using 3rd party ink to reduce the cost). Lots of people out there probably wouldn't recommend straight alcohol but it worked in my case and did not damage the printer which has continued to work without any problems for 3 weeks now. For the cost of this kit you get a 10 ML syringe with a semi-flexible tube that resembles silicone fuel tubing used for glow fuel powered RC aircraft (although silicon tubing is softer and might even work better). You also get a small bottle of cleaning liquid that is probably worth about 25 cents at most, and some 5 cent gloves that I didn't use. You also get some pretty good instructions that give you the courage to go where you've never gone before with your printer which is injecting foreign fluids into your printer's ink lines and print head. At first I was extremely careful but in the end, not having much to loose, just loaded it with alcohol and it cleared what was apparently dried ink clogging the print head.

I read a LOT of the reviews for this product and decided it was worth a try to save our printer and save us from having to buy a new one. I'm glad I did. The black ink on our Brother MFC-J430W had stopped working about 2 months ago and the regular cleanings and tricks online (like putting a windex soaked paper towel under the printer head and moving back and forth) did not work. I followed the directions and video online last night and it seemed like it wasn't working, in fact the blue and yellow stopped working too. I used the solution once on the yellow and blue still nothing. BUT, I added more solution to the black and let it sit overnight AND reread the reviews and noted the tips and this morning I got it going!! So the tips that stood out to me were to print A LOT of test prints, including the PDF test print given on the product's instructions. A couple reviewers pointed out that it takes a lot of prints to get the cleaning solution through the lines and to get the ink flowing again. So I flushed the solution as per the instructions until the paper towel showed no more black ink and it was mostly clear. (This took total about 10 flushings.) At this point I left the other colors alone. Then I ran several PDF test prints from the website, with the setting on black and white, and I keep reusing the same paper since at this point no ink was going through yet. Then as another reviewer commented, the printing improved suddenly instead of gradually. When I started getting ink on the PDF test prints, I put in a new black ink cartridge and ran a test print from the printer and it was working!! The photo I attached shows how the black wasn't working in the beginning (on the left) and the PDF test prints (on the right). I also fanned out the sheets to give you an idea of how many times I ran the test prints to get the ink flowing again. Keep in mind I ran the sheets through at least twice before the ink flowed well. So if at first it seems to be getting worse, keep pressing on, it worked in our case!

Wife printed a ~100 page document. Black cartridge was low when she began, so the printer pushed the 100 pages through with streaks and blank areas. Installed new black cartridge - no luck. Multiple head cleanings did no good - still streaky. Ordered this kit and it now prints like new! Followed the directions in the kit and on the youtube video. Started a print test and unplugged the printer to get the head in the middle of the carriage. Removed the ink cartridges. Then I heated 4 ml liquid in the syringe. One trick I used was to cut a strip of copy paper and put it on top of a folded paper towel. This made it much easier to get the folded paper towel under the print head. Once the paper towel was under the head, pulled the paper strip out, holding the paper towel steady under the head. Slowly pushed 4 ml of liquid through the head and onto the paper towel, Installed the print cartridges and did a test print. No black, so I put the machine through 10 cleaning cycles. No black for 7 cycles, then a little black for two cycles, then 100% on cycle number 10! This kit rescued a ~$200 printer! UPDATE: It is Oct 2021 and the black print head on the same printer ekpt requiring self-cleaning. Black text would clear up for a few pages then start skipping. I decided that the outside of the print head was probably the issue. Using the same kit I had on hand, I folded a paper towel to a 1" width and put it under the print head. [Use a 1" piece of printer folded paper as a "guide" to work the paper towel under the printer, as mentioned above]. I then soaked the paper towel with the cleaning solution, then slid the print head over it. After an hour [and a LOT of ink appearing on the paper towel] I replaced the paper towel with another one, saturated it with the cleaning solution again, and let it sit for another hour. This completely cleared up the issue. Apparently the ink builds up on the head. I recommend this as a first step before actually injecting the cleaning solution through the ink system.

Funcionar funciona, aunque utilizas la décima parte de bote, por lo tanto es carísimo, casi tanto como la sangre de unicornio. Al precio que van las impresoras de inyección merecerá la pena el gasto dependiendo del cariño que tengas a tu impresora. Creo que las instrucciones son complicadas para lo que es el proceso en si.

To help others, this review includes specific information as to how the product solved a problem with my printer: The printer in question is the Brother MFC-J5330DW which is approximately 6 months old and has been used daily, primarily for office type work. After-market (extra large capacity) print cartridges have been used for all 4 colours. In recent weeks the black print nozzles have been blocking, leading to missing lines and feint print etc. The other colours have been fine. The on board software cleaning method worked fine in so far as it soon restored perfect printing. However, the Big issue was that within literally 2 to 3 pages of work, the nozzles were blocking up again, so something was definitely not okay, and it started to get very irritating having to constantly go through the self clean cycles etc, only for the problem to recur so quickly. Before taking this printer to the local recycling centre, I purchased this print head cleaning kit. I followed the instructions included and the on line video tutorials to the letter and in summary, this printer is now working back to 100% reliability, which is such a relief. For those wanting to know a little more about my experience using this kit, I would add the following: I used my own kitchen paper wrapped in several folds to catch the cleaning solution/ink residue etc. When I manually moved the print head over the fresh paper, even before using the cleaning solution, I was amazed at how much black “graphite” looking residue deposited itself onto the paper. This I strongly suspect, was the cause of the problems. Surprisingly, but thankfully, the injection of the cleaning fluid required hardly any pressure through the syringe. I injected the solution very slowly as it quickly soaks the kitchen paper towel below the head. After injecting a bit of the solution, I kept manually moving the print head gently back and forth, moving it to a clean bit of paper towel as necessary, and repeating. I then left the solution in for about 90 minutes, before completing the process. After reinserting a new Black cartridge, the test print initially showed some missing black lines, which was disheartening. However, the instructions did say that it may require up to 4 of the printer’s own cleaning cycle to complete the process. Thankfully after 3 self cleans, the test print was free of missing lines. Importantly, this printer has since done lots of printing with zero issues, all working fine. In conclusion, I have to say that this excellent product, combined with great customer instructions/support, delivered exactly what it promised, and I have retained the remaining solution for when the process needs repeating at sometime in future. For me this kit scores 10 out of 10.

Kit reçu au complet, conforme à la description. Après utilisation de celui-ci j'ai pu réutiliser mon imprimante. Produit recommandé

Great service and product

Had this inkjet for a long time. Wanted to upgrade to a laser printer, but would be stepping down to black and white for my budget level. With COVID this year, schools have gone more electronic, so really haven't had to print out anything for the kids yet. Black on my old printer started to fade to the point of being unusable. Decided to give this a shot. Ease of use? Pretty easy! Depending on your printer model, I found using a pair of needle nose pliers to get the tube onto the nipple really worked wonders. I have read about negative reviews and my experience does make me sympathize with them. Performed the clean on the black, and as per the instructions, I decided to leave the cleaning solution in overnight. Following this, I could not get black to print. Cleaned the heads multiple times, etc. Nothing. Decided to do it again but this time start to go through the cleaning/test print process almost right away (so there was solution/pressure in the lines). Again, very little printing going on, but I kept at it, doing two to three cleaning cycles and then a test print. Overall, I had to work for about 30-45min of cleaning/test prints. Fresh ink finally started to flow and I have full print capability back. In the end, it took a little more effort than I thought, but I am happy with the outcome; and in the end that's what is important. I doubt that this will work miracles, but for simple head cleaning, this kit has all your need to perform the task.