How To Clean HP Officejet Pro 8600 Printhead?

If the quality of a printed photo or document from your HP Officejet Pro 8600 printer is not working as expected, then cleaning its ink cartridge printhead is a reliable solution. If you are encountering this situation, but don’t know how to clean the HP Officejet Pro 8600 printhead, then we can help you. In this guide, we will describe two highly effective methods to clean HP Officejet Pro 8600 printhead.

How To Clean HP Officejet Pro 8600 Printhead?

Things You Need to Have for Cleaning the Printhead:

If you are able to clear the printhead of your HP Officejet Pro 8600 printer by using its display menu option, then you won’t require any other instrument. However, if you decide to clean the HP Officejet Pro 8600 printhead manually, then you will require a few things:

• One Syringe.
• One Pipe to connect the syringe to the cartridge nozzle.
• One clean soft cotton cloth.
• Clean liquid or distilled water.

Steps to clean HP Officejet Pro 8600 printhead

The above-mentioned items are available in the cleaning kit of the HP Officejet Pro 8600 printer, but if you want to buy them separately, then you can do that as well.

First, we will discuss the simpler way of cleaning the printhead, which is through the HP Officejet Pro 8600 display menu option. If this method doesn’t work, then you should try the more complicated method which will require you to clean the printhead manually.

Method 1: Clean Printhead Using Display Menu (Clean Automatically)

Follow the steps given below in the display menu of the control panel of your HP Officejet Pro 8600 printer:

1. Scroll right in the Setup Menu to locate the ‘Setup’ option, then tap on it.
2. Inside the Setup sub-menu, scroll down to locate and select the ‘Tools’ option.
3. Inside Tools, tap on the ‘Clean Printhead’ option.
4. Wait for the cleaning of the printhead to complete, then the printer will print a page.

If in the printed page you get the quality you desire, then this method has been successful in cleaning the printhead of your HP Officejet Pro 8600 printer. However, if this solution didn’t work for you, then try the next solution.

Method 2: Clean Printhead Manually

In this method you will have to perform the printhead cleaning manually. Therefore, you should take certain precautions, like being gentle while working with your printer and follow the steps in the exact order as they have been mentioned below.

1. Open the cartridge door of your HP printer.
   
2. Wait for the cartridge carriage to move to the left side, then gently push each cartridge to release them from the cartridge holder. Finally, pull out all the cartridges.
   
3. When the cartridge holder is empty, then lift the latch on its back to unlock it from the cartridge carriage and pull it out of the carriage.
   
4. The bottom side of the cartridge holder will look like the one you can see in the image below.
   
5. Firmly put the cartridge holder into a large, flat surfaced plastic box so that you can clean it without any problems.
   
6. Take the syringe, fill it with the cleaning liquid and attach the plastic tube to it.
   
7. Locate the Black ink cartridge nozzle and insert the other end of the plastic tube into the nozzle.
   
8. Now, gently push the cleaning liquid using the syringe into the Black ink cartridge nozzle. Don’t push hard as extra flow can cause the printhead to burst.
   
9. You will see that the Black waste ink will come out of the nozzle.  You can perform this step multiple times until you are satisfied that the Black nozzle is completely clean.
   
10. Perform the above step with the Yellow ink cartridge nozzle, then with the Cyan and the Magenta ink cartridge nozzles as well.
    
11. After cleaning each of the nozzles, turn the cartridge holder and clean it with the help of a soft cotton cloth.
    
12. Insert the cartridge holder back into the cartridge carriage of your HP printer.
    
13. Lock the latch in the back to firmly place the cartridge holder on the cartridge carriage.
    
14. Insert all the ink cartridges one-by-one back into their designated slots.
    
15. Close the cartridge door of your HP Officejet Pro 8600 printer.
    

Now, print a test page with your HP printer and you will find that the print quality has greatly improved.

In the above guide, we have described how to clean HP Officejet Pro 8600 printhead. Although we have shared two highly effective methods, but if none of them work for you, then contact the HP support staff.