C310a Not Printing Black

[Grimmley]

Ok I have gone through all the posts on these forms, followed all the maintenance links, replaced cartridges, aligning the printing heads, cleaning the printing heads, powered it off/on, and the printer still is not printing black. It was working fine and then just stopped printing black. I have only used this printer to print about 150 pages since I got it last June. Any Ideas? I am getting frustrated with thus printer.

[Bob_Headrick]

I would suggest you check the ink levels.  If they are OK then the procedure in this post may resolve the issue.

[Grimmley]

Ok I have tried that just replaced ALL the cartridges AGAIN.. its still NOT working. Any other ideas?

[bluj]

I have the same problem.  I replaced all of my cartridges and my c310a will not print black.  It also reads a failed alignment error.  Were you able to get your printer to print black?  Please let me know if you did.  Thanks.

[Bob_Headrick]

The black is required for alignment, if it is not printing the alignment will fail.  Try the troubleshooting steps in this document.  If that does not resolve the issue then soak the printhead as described here.

[bluj]

Bob, Thank you so much for taking your time to reply.  I tried both the troubleshooting steps and soaking the printhead as you suggested.  It seemed like it did not do anything because my black did not print after these steps.  I gave up and called HP tech support, hoping that they can help me further.  My first call did not help much because on their system, it showed that my warranty expired.  It did not expire, so I found my sales receipt and called again three days later.  The tech Francis had me turn on the printer and copy a document.  The black printed on the first try!  It was not a perfect print because it had streaks going across the black text, but the black finally printed.  We went through several steps to get the black to print clearly.  We aligned the cartridges a few times, cleaned the cartridges, printed several test pages, and wiped the electrical contacts of the printhead with a damp lint-free cloth.  I'm extremely relieved that my printer now works.  Thank you.