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3 Easy Ways To Keep Your Thermal Printers Clean

Kristi Seifert / May 17, 2019

Spring often prompts a frenzy of cleaning, so why not include your Toshiba thermal printers? Our thermal printers are manufactured to provide the sharpest image possible, and in order to maintain the best quality image regular preventative maintenance must be performed. The usage rate and external environment are the key factors in how often your printer should be cleaned.

Paper dust, adhesive ooze and environmental contaminants all contribute to a printer getting dirty, so to preserve printhead life it must be cleaned after every roll of labels.

Toshiba suggests three options to perform this maintenance.

  1. Isopropyl alcohol (IPA) cleaning wipes are the easiest and most cost-effective. This one-time use product and can be thrown away after the service is complete.
  2. Another excellent option is the Toshiba IPA cleaning pen or silicone oil cleaning pen, a multiple use product that can be used up to 10 times before disposal.
  3. Or consider IPA waffletech cards, which can be used in conjunction with the wipes or pens for a deeper clean. These one-time use cleaning cards are fed through the printer and clean the entire print path at once.

Whichever method you choose, remember to create a preventative maintenance routine for your printers. Cleaning after every roll of labels will reduce paper jams, poor print quality/print voids and illegible barcodes. The minimal time it takes to clean your Toshiba printer is worth the savings in service fees and production efficiency.