Printhead fitting cont.

With the printheads cleaned, the next job is to fit them in place. As with the ink cartridges each head has to be fitted into its own slot. Each printhead contains a small quantity of ink,. Fitting the heads is fairly easy, but you must make sure they enter the printhead assembly squarely. The printhead's should last for the life of the printer, but should they fail for any reason then replacing them is straightforward, just tug and tug on the blue handle, it will come out.

Four printhead's - each supports two colours	All seated, then we will continue.

You can just see the ink feed lines in the picture above. Close the blue printhead assembly cover and shut the top cover. After 15 seconds I received a message saying replace faulty Photo Black Light Grey printhead. I removed the head and replaced it again, this time I didn't get the error message. I can only assume I didn't seat it correctly. Don't you just hate it when a machine tells you a lie - it should have known I didn't fit it correctly.

Printer calibration

We are nearly at the first prints stage, but first we must calibrate the print heads, this is a fully automatic process, you don't have to do much other than watch and listen.

Remove the output tray completely	Load the calibration media

To load the ten sheets of A4 calibration media you must remove the output tray and then you have access to the main media tray. Place the glossy media face down in the tray, as with other HP printers this printer also takes the media through a U turn, which may limit the thickness of media you can use in this tray.

As I said earlier, I have been using the B9180 for nearly a year, and one of my main concerns was loading A4 media in the tray could cause paper jam problems. When pushing the front paper guide up to the media, the guide would push the media over the rear stop. Unfortunately this is still the case with this printer. However, once you get the feel of the front paper guide you should be able to use this without any problem. The other way to load paper without causing a jam is to remove the main tray completely and then load the media. This is not a major issue, just an annoying one.

With the media now loaded and the output tray back in place I have pressed the OK button to start the one time only printer optimization. This process will take between 30 - 60 minutes............

Completed, the process took 31 minutes 44 seconds and has produced five calibration prints. Looking at the colours they are certainly an improvement over my previous B9180 prints. The colours are vibrant and solid - should be interesting from here.