Some notes about printers.

I have a gang of them (as noted on my page) and some as old as 25 years that I held onto for grins (old Diablo Dasiey Wheel and an old Star 24 pin Dot Matrix .. They still work with generic drivers on some systems!!

This REALLY does not apply to that 40 buck "use it until it runs out of ink and toss it because the ink costs more than the printer" piece of junk you got at ShopCo or Goodwill or in a close out pile at your local super market. This is for those units that you really want to keep up and running. The printer that cost a couple of Benjamins and really prints great!

The key is their set up and care!

Printers are MECHANICAL devices with a BUNCH of moving parts. Take that into consideration.

Setup:
NEVER in a window that gets ANY sun.
NEVER over a heating outlet or source.
(Warm room is fine .. HOT room is NOT fine!)
IF you have animals, keep your printer OFF of the floor!
Pet hair will kill the thing before you can blink!
(NOTE: Heat will make the lubricants dry out and hair will just gunk it up!)

Maintenance:
First and foremost, keep them CLEAN.
By clean I mean run a cleaning cloth/pad through them once every couple of months (depending on your usage profile .. more printing = more cleaning). The cleaning pads can be purchased at any office big box store. (Office Depot has a house brand, for instance.)
Running the pad through as instructed will clean the pinch rollers and get the glaze off off the rollers. Plus, standard paper comes with a microscopic layer of DUST on it .. so the pages will not stick together when the printer picks up the paper. That dust accumulates INSIDE your printer!
Open the darn thing up and vacuum out the dust bunnies and general detritus on occasion. And use canned air to blow the dust out of where you cannot get your vacuum tools.
Occasionally remove the carts (usually when you put a new one in) and take a swab and DENATURED alcohol (not rubbing stuff .. that has OIL in it) and clean the contacts INSIDE where they marry up with the cart. (That is provided your printer is so set up where you can get to them.)

IF your printer sits for days without being used, get into the habit of running a test sheet once a week just to keep the nozzles on your jet from clogging up or your carts from drying up. Yes, it does use paper and ink, but better than than having to take it in for service and shelling out almost as much as the thing is worth to get it cleaned and adjusted!

You MAY have to resort to running a head cleaning program and each manufacturer has their own recommended method of doing so. Search Google with the term: "clean heads on ______________" where the fill in the blank is the make and model of your particular unit.
In general it would be a good idea to have their maintainance manual (if you did not save it with all the stuff that came with the printer, or if you bought that prime unit USED somewhere.) Using Google should get you a PDF file you can print out while the printer is working or save it to a file on your hard drive. Either way, get the thing and you will NOT be sorry!
Listing a link or two here what with all the THOUSANDS of printer variations out there would be futile when your search will yield for YOUR specific printer!

Oh, and personally I do NOT like refilled carts .. especially IF I do them myself. No way to test for cracks in the cart or to test for electrical continuity .. PLUS, the ink you get in refill kits is really NOT that good. The pigment or dyes are of a coarser grain grind (microns) than the good stuff .. that is why it is so cheap, not processed as well.