Scheduling printing to keep a plotter functioning.

Anyone who has a large format inkjet plotter (HP A0 etc…) knows that if they sit idle for a long time the ink will dry up and clog the print heads. This can be an expensive repair so it is a good idea to print something regularly. If this is run from a server you can use the WORDPAD application to do the printing.
So first create a wordpad (.docx) document with enough color on it to give all the inkjets a good workout and then schedule it to print with the following powershell script. (Put your printer name into the script to make sure it goes to the correct one and the full path to the wordpad document).

$print= Get-WmiObject -Class win32_printer -Filter "Name='HP DesignJet 1055CM'"                                                                                
$print.SetDefaultPrinter()                                                                                                                                           
Start-Process -FilePath "C:\appdata\testprint\testprint.docx" -Verb print  

About Jeff Turner

Technical director of Nano Tera Network Solutions.
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