There are a few reasons why your edible image printer may not be working properly. Here’s a few of the common problems.
The printer’s leaving a faint trail of ink on my icing sheets
Firstly ensure your printer’s set to the correct paper type. As edible icing sheets are thicker than standard paper they often produce a better image when the Envelope setting is used. This ensures the print heads/rollers are raised to accommodate a thicker input paper type.
If you’ve changed your paper setting to ‘envelope’ and you’re still getting a trail of ink, the most common cause of this is residual ink on your printheads. This can usually be removed by running a print-head cleaning cycle and roller clean on your printer (check your printer menu settings to access the cleaning cycle).
For more severe clogging, remove the printhead from your printer and run it under water to deep clean. See Edible Print supplies YouTube channel for easy instructions on how to remove and clean your printhead.
Remember if you’re printing high volumes of icing sheets / wafer paper through your printer you will need to replace your edible image printer regularly. Look at the printer manual for the number of pages you can expect to print through your printer.
The ink isn’t emptying from my one of my ink cartridges
This is usually easily resolved. Simply remove the effected cartridge and pop a pin through the air intake hole to allow more air into the cartridge. The air intake hole is the soft round area above the sponge.
If this doesn’t work, carry out the printhead cleaning operations above.
Again it’s important to change your ink cartridges regularly to prolong the life of your edible image printer.
The Images are Faint
Have a play around with the media type, colour and quality settings on your edible printer. Often simply by changing the media type to photo paper and the quality to best this can make a huge difference to the final results.
Edible printing is not an exact science, it is often a case of trial and error before you achieve an end result you're happy with.
Tip: Always practice on standard copier paper to save wasting your icing sheets or wafer paper