I fixed my Canon i550 printer!
It was in storage for like 3+ years, wrapped in cellophane for good measure. The ink heads were all dry, as I'd learned in recent years can happen easily with inkjets, but what to do, right?
So I googled for canon unclog nozzles and found a few simple solutions, from the macho/robust, to the more ordinary & improvised my own.
but first i had to learn how to remove the print head! -- it was easy!
Summary: DO try this at home!
took me less than 5 minutes to get my dead printer back to life!
“this concept totally worked. i have canon i550 and from reading a few found sites i took a stab at it - i removed the print head and cleaned the nozzles with q-tip and rubbing alcohol. (i noticed the nozzles are like a fine mesh) and also the print head itself (underneath) being careful to use a diff q-tip for each color nozzle. i then ran the entire assembly under hot water for good measure until it ran clean. i was very careful to towel dry the electronic especially, as no sense in frying it! popped it all back in, powered the printer and ran the test page. it was 90% there! ran the self-clean and sure enough the black all working like new! total time 5 mins (the printer status claimed my color cartridges were low so i assume that is the case, but the black working is encouraging enough.). note: my printer was in storage for like 3 years (wrapped in cellophane) and i'm thrilled to get it back online with ease.”