Alps MD 1300 Thermal Printer - Answered Questions & Fixed issues

Wow.... last made in 22007 according to the ALPS USA website. From what I read, it should be a dynamyte printer. Several things to consider..... 1) how long has it been since you thoroughly cleaned the machine... or spent the$$ to have maintainance done on it. 6 years of use and rubber rollers get slippy, paper feed mechanisms need cleaned and resurfaced (this isgeneric info.... i never have worked with an alps) 2) this is a dye "sublimation" printer whose print mechanism moves the sheet through the mechanism 4 times (one for each color) so check and see if there is buildup of dry print medium or lint--paper dust blocking. (Airblast first, then clean with one of those long wood stick q tims. Dipped in alcohol. 3) check your printer drived ssset-up. Some printers can be set to greyscale only. reload your driver. I believe I saw a link saying drivers can be had at driver.com (or was it drivers?) Also, frim 2007 may not be compatable with win 8. Or win 7. Probably will work with good ol windows xp. Put a good firewall on XP and limit it to only allowing printer calls assigned to whatever port. Good luck Sam

Use a cotton swap and isopropyl alcohol to gently clean the print head. The process is described in the user guide for the printer. If you don't have one, join the ALPS Yahoo Group and you can find one in the file section for download.

The MDC-OPWH is Opaque White. It's meant to be used as an overcoat when making things like Iron-On transfers when they are applied on dark backgrounds. Regular white is used for undercoating for things like waterslide decals.

It might be the door sensor. Can you check to see if it's working?

No not for the average consumer/hobbyist for printing white and metallics with an overlay options. There are a lot of options if you are looking for photo quality printers.

It sounds like the power supply is dead. Since you changed the fuse, it sounds like you've opened the printer. Can you check the output voltage of the PS? Always becareful when working around a charged PS.

Yes. It's very easy. Turn the printer off, unplug it, and disconnect the printer cable. Insert two sheets of paper, and make sure the paper feed is set to automatic. You need to have a black cartridge loaded into the 1st slot. Plug in the printer and wait for the lights to turn off. Press and hold the power button at the same time press and hold the "ready/Insert" button. Release the power button, but keep holding the "ready/Insert" button for at least 4 seconds. After 4 seconds, release the "ready/Insert" button and quickly press it again. The printer will start the selftest. For the 1300, the number of bands printed will be on page two. On the 1st page, there will be a black bar on the bottom of the page. It should be a solid black bar with no lines - this is the test for bad elements on the print head.

Make sure you have the standard ALPS ink cartridges in the printer (dark gray). I've seen people getting a flashing error light when trying to use the photo cartridges (dark blue) to print.

I had a similar problem with my MD-2010 printer. It turned out to be a loose wire on the power supply.

Make sure you are using the cartridges with the dark grey cases.

Try changing cartridges to see if you have the same problem. Also, try a good cleaning of the print head.

Have you tried reinstall the driver and the software (if any)? This could also be a problem with the driver and it's the basic step. First of all uninstall the printer's driver and softwares from your computer, restart your computer and reinstall them. I would recommend you to install the latest updated driver, you can download the driver here (Click Here). Open the link and click the indicated link (shown below):




Actually, there is no driver for other o.s. except Windows NT. Since you didn't mention the installed O.S. of your computer, I can't make this specific. For windows XP, you can use this driver (Click Here), open the link and click the blue "Download".


I would also recommend you to clean the components of the printer including the cartridges contacts (gold contacts). Uninstall all the cartridges, take a blower or a vacuum cleaner and clean the inside of the printer. You can use a cotton bud dampen with alcohol to clean the contacts of the cartridges. Clean the contacts on the printer with the same material mentioned above.


It's also important to try only with New cartridges, might be one of the old cartridges is damaged or having problem which causes this problem.

Let me know if you need further help (with more details please).


Good Luck.


Thanks for using FixYa.

One test you can run is the self print test. Discount the printer from your computer. Load a single sheet of paper and the CMYK cartridges. Turn on the printer. Press and hold the "reset" button until the lights begin to flash. Release the "reset" button and the printer should do a self print test.

The 1300 prints spot colors the same way as the other ALPS printers. To print spot colors, create a mask or layer using only black with your artwork. Select the spot color you want and the black areas on the mask will be printed in the spot color. Make sure that you check the overlay box so the printer retains the printer. You also need to make sure you are using the ALPS printer driver supplied with the printer and NOT the default Windows plug and play driver.

What color are the cartridges that you are putting in? Are they blue or are they greyish in color? If you are trying to print on laser or other such paper, you need to be using the greyish cartridges. Also make sure that the cartridges that you put in have plenty of ribbon in them and that you've put them in facing the correct direction, you should be able to see the color names when you open the printer. If you don't, you've installed them facing the wrong way. Also make sure that you have all the correct colors installed for the print job. Unless you're printing strictly in black and white, you'd be surprised at what colors are needed to make a color, unless you're using pure Cyan, Magenta or Yellow. Any colors other than those will need to use a combo of those colors to reproduce colors properly. I hope this helps. If not, write back and say what steps you've followed to try to remedy the error.

First of all, Alps MD inks do not "Dry up". They are dry to start with!

It sounds like you may be running XP, with the Microsoft driver for this printer installed. You need to load the Alps driver, which you can get by joining the alps or alpsdecal group at http://groups.yahoo.com. You can find the driver in the files section of one of the groups.

Join the Yahoo ALPS group. They have a driver for the 1300 in the file section.

Horizontal lines are not good. First try cleaning the printhead with a cotton swab and alcohol. Then run the embedded self print test. There should be a solid black bar at the bottom if the page. If there are lines in the black bar, then most likely your printhead is damaged.

Hi there,

Currently, there are no available driver for Alps MD 1300 for Windows 7 as this has not been released at all. However, you can find the download here for other version like xp or windows 2000.

http://www.opendrivers.com/driver/213050/alps-printer-md-1300-driver-2.24-win2000-xp-free-download.html

Try changing the printer cable.