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I spilled some ink inside my HP printer and now it's dead to me and doesn't respond to any actions. Have I lost it or can I salvage and fix it, despite not being able to open it up for a full clean?

I bought and installed a CISS set (Continuous Ink Supply System) for my HP F2180 printer. I placed ink bottles at a higher level than the printer for a while, and under pressure of a gust of wind, the ink fell out of the cartridges and dropped into the printer.

When I tried to turn off the printer, it didn't respond.

I unplugged the printer, then plugged it in again. It turns on, but all indicator lights are on. Printer doesn't do anything else.

There was about 50mL of black ink under the printer and I cleaned it with difficulty.

I have no screwdriver for the printer, so I can't open it and clean inside as much as I would like to.

Is there any chance that I can recover my printer just by cleaning out the ink from the inside?

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I would say that you probably need to disassemble the unit and clean up the mess. There's virtually nothing that can't be disassembled if you're reasonably clever about it. – DanH Dec 31 '11 at 22:34
@DanH do you really think that it will work after cleaning? – Tural Teyyuboglu Dec 31 '11 at 23:33
Ink isn't really corrosive, but it could have some conductive properties, it would depend on how much ink got in there, and what in particular it touched. If anything shorted, you could be up a creek regardless of how well it is cleaned. Though there is always a possibility of it returning to normal after a THOROUGH cleaning, IF nothing was shorted/damaged. – Paperlantern Jan 1 at 2:47
There's no way to tell, especially from this distance, whether cleaning will be effective or futile. My best guess, though, is that if you can remove the ink that is shorting things without damaging the circuitry in the process then it should be OK. – DanH Jan 1 at 6:00
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