There are many ways to lightly clean a printhead in these forums so I will skip them all and go right to the most thorough method. This is for my MX850 but it can be used with any printhead that is constructed in the same way. Your objective here is to completely remove all ink and particles from the entire printhead.
How to clean a clogged Canon MX or PIXMA printhead the right way!
So I put the printhead on dry toilet paper this time, poured alcohol inside the printhead on both the color and black sides. The alcohol "sipped" into the paper with the black side almost clean, and some blue/red coming out from the color side.
I have already posted some procedures for cleaning an Epson workforce printhead. Here are an additional procedures, useful to purge air or perhaps clean out a clog. The first procedure requires about a foot long piece of silicone rubber tubing, 1/8 inch Inside Diameter (available from a hobby / model shop): Step 1.
With a dry sheet of tissue, clean up the printhead contacts and the areas around the pickup discs. Don't brush the nozzles or the pickup discs. Don't let the printhead dry; insert it in the head carriage, insert your cartridges and run a cleaning cycle.
When sitting idle air can migrate up into the printhead and then it will have nothing to print. Performing a head clean will just pull ink through the system and fill back up the nozzles so that it can print again. No need to worry about head cleaning on these models as they have user replaceable waste ink/maintenance tanks.