I nearly had to wave goodbye to my trust Canon ip4700 this week. Every time I tried to print I got an error 6C10 and every time I looked that up, printer boffs and forums told me the ink pads were saturated and they needed replacement.
Just to put that into context, a set of pads is £65, or a replacement printer (which would also upgrade me to wifi and a built in scanner) is £40.
Hmmm.
Not to be deterred, and in recognition of the literally hundreds of printable CDs, sheets of A4 photo paper and the reams of invoices and bills that come out each year when I run my accounts, I searched again. This time I found someone who had looked elsewhere and cleared his 6C10 by cleaning the print head. Not only that, he cleaned it with warm water, not one of the cleaning fluids advertised on ebay.
Suffice it to say, after a trimmed down process which took all of 15 minutes, I now have a working printer again. Long may that continue!
You can see the process in action here: