Canon MP270 printer not printing very well

Life's too short! Bin it and get a laser.

I agree but would add . . . .

The MP270 hasn't been made for longer than 5 yrs so I suspect the true age is longer.

I have tried to resurrect one in the past and despite being not bad at these things, it beat me. It is a total f'ck to get at the heads and once you get there is the IPA soak, the ammonia soak, reassemble and it still doesn't work so deep dismantle (again), rinse and repeat.

Even the most user friendly inkjets wont respond well to as light a use as this one while an all in one laser will soak it up and not care.

Bottom line, junk it and buy an all in one laser, mono if you want to save money.

If you must have a go, soak some sheets of paper in ammonia and run some prints through (lots) using them as the media to see if things loosen up. Don't expect too much.

ink has dried up That takes the disposable PG512 cartridge with printhead attached. just buy a new one

Had a similar problem. I took my printer to "Cartridge World" and they cleaned the head for free. They put a special cartridge in with some cleaning fluid.

He said best to run it once a week to stop this sort of thing.

You should be surprised it works at all if it hadn't been run for a year or so. Inkjets sulk if they don't get used every couple of months. A few are a little more robust but the inks will dry out and clog the heads if you leave them unused through an entire summer.

Another one that takes them down even faster is a dusty environment. A plaster ceiling collapse in a building where I worked trashed every inkjet in the place (not just the room where the ceiling fell in).

Before you go down the route of refilling check it out on utube or google as some carts need a vacuum fill. If that is the case you can buy compatibles much cheaper on ebay.

My bad, not the printer I thought it was. Agree, if cart has printhead then it is an easy way to resurrect.

The best thing about my Canon inkjet printer is that it also works as a scanner and will create a pdf file with several pages if needed.

I've been pleased with my Dell 1760nw colour laser which I got for less than £100. It is very eco friendly and switches itself off when not in use. I have to manually switch it back on when I want something to come out.

I'm not surprised, its an inkjet. Get something decent, ie a laser.

NT