Tech Olive

Before you ask, the answer is yes: Rasterbating is the term I intended to use. In short, it’s taking an image, turning it into dots and printing it across multiple pages as a banner. There is even a dedicated tool for it! The problem is the dots are too low of quality for me. So I generally take an image, blow up the resolution and then divide it into multiple files to print individually. Not technically rasterbating, but I use the term loosely. This is a two part guide to help you make your own wall sized art.

The first half is getting your printer ready by cleaning, repairing, and filling the ink cartridge. If you have a relatively new and easy to maintain printer, congrats! Wait for part two! The problem I have is that my printer is almost 6 years old, and even worse, it uses ink! For the record, I have a Canon IP1500 and wouldn’t trade it for any other printer in the world…laser maybe.

You’ll need some newspaper to lay down and make a work area. An ink cartridge refill kit, some general print paper, napkins or paper towels, rags, isopropyl alcohol, Q-tips, time, and as usual, caffeine.

The below image sums up the base problem. All ink printers have a sponge that soaks up ink during the clean cycle and general rest periods. This sponge gets filled rather quickly and then renders your clean cycle useless. The second problem is the plastic scraper, which removes ink residue from the heads.

The fix is simple. Using a flat head screw driver, pry up the sponge and let it soak in some water and then isopropyl alcohol. Then using a Q-tip and isopropyl alcohol, clean off the plastic scrapes.

Below is my head setup. The great thing about my printer, unlike others, is that the ink cartridge doesn’t contain the head unit. Rather, it’s built into the machine itself. The drawback is that unlike usual printers that get a nice clean head every new cartridge, mine just gets more ink caked on.

Simply let it soak in a millimeter of isopropyl alcohol and finish with Q-tips.

Finally, follow the instructions on your ink refill kit and get your cartridge filled. I discovered that instead of drilling into the top of the cartridge like my manual suggested, to simply fill it from the bottom sponge. It’s recommended that you only fill as much as you’re going to use, to prevent it drying inside or leaking out.

Here are some final results. The one on top is before all of this, you can see streaks, broken lines, general anomalies. The bottom is after (disregard the squares in the image, that’s due to it being a low resolution JPG), and you can see there is no streaking, breaks, or lines.

Next week we’ll have the nitty gritty software side of dividing up, saving, and printing the images. Then cutting, taping, aligning, and putting them up on the wall.