if you've ever had to purchase replacement paper for a thermal printer then you know it's a relatively inexpensive purchase but you have to make sure you get exactly the right kind of paper there are different widths and different configurations depending on your printer you need to replace the paper with exactly the right size so it might be good to keep documentation so you know exactly what to order since the printers are designed with such simplicity it becomes very easy to quickly replace the paper in a thermal printer to replace the paper you open the printer remove the old spool replace it with a new spool of paper and close the cover and now you've replaced the paper in that thermal printer there may be times when your thermal printer is missing information on the output that could be because the heating element is dirty so cleaning that element can solve that problem you might want to use ipa or isopropyl alcohol to clean that heating element they also have cleaning pins with ipa inside of them and you would simply rub the pin over the heating element itself make sure you check the manufacturer's recommendations to know exactly what cleaning process is right for your printer these heating elements are not very large so we'd either clean or swab down just the area where the heating element is making contact with the paper they also make cards that you can put through the printer that will clean the entire paper path making it a very simple process for cleaning that heating element although a thermal paper doesn't use ink or any toner it still gets very dirty on the inside of the printer this is usually due to dust coming from the paper that's going through the printer path so one of the easiest ways to clean this out especially for these very small thermal printers is to take the printer outside open it up and blow out the printer with some compressed air if compressed air is not an option you can always use a damp cloth to clean on the inside you would probably not want to use a typical vacuum cleaner unless it's a vacuum that is specifically designed to work with electronic equipment that's because the movement of all that dust tends to create static electricity which of course is very bad for electronic devices another important consideration is that the paper you're using inside of that printer is very sensitive to heat if you add additional heat to this paper you'll see that it gets darker and darker as you add more heat so you want to be sure that you don't put any of this thermal paper any place there might be heat like the dashboard of your car a radiator or anywhere near a hair dryer if it does get near a heat source you'll find the page will get darker and darker until it becomes very difficult to see what was originally printed on that page this is why we don't use thermal printers when we need to archive information this will fade throughout the years and if you get it near any heat source it will become unreadable and that's certainly not what you would want if you want to archive this information for a long period of time you