Blurry and Shadowed printing F4440

[plb999]

I changed my ink cartridges and now the printing is blurry and shadowed, despite running the alignment process NUMEROUS times. How do I get my the text to be crisp and clean again?  I have also cleaned the print heads a couple times, but it doesn't help.  Everything worked great until I changed the cartridges.

[zyxw55]

Hello PLB999   Sorry to hear about your blurriness.  If it is only black text that is blurry then you may have some debris stuck to the carriage (the part of the printer that moves back and forth with the pens) .  Sometimes hair, carpet fuzz, dust bunnies, etc...  can get stuck to the underside of the carriage and then get drug through the not quite yet dry black ink while printing.  Here is a document that helps explain how to clean your cartridge...

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01670710

If you look at figure 18th you will see some features on the carriage that can also get fibers stuck to them.  Use a simllar wet cotton swab to clean these features on the carriage as well.

Hope this helps

[plb999]

Thanks, I have tried nearly every solution except replacing the cartridges, which seeing that they are brand new, I am reluctant to go thru that expense. I could not get solution 6 to work, (Print extended self test). I don't know if that feature is available on the F4440?

It really is a shadow problem. It's like if you open a word doc and create some wordart and then turn the shadowing feature on. That's exactly what everything that prints looks like, I can see the black text and then a grey shadow slightly to the left of the text, like it's not printing in alignment. Its the shadowing that makes it look blurred. 

I would like to try to find a test page that is perfect, so I can scan it and it will align off of that. When I print a test page none of the lines line up and the black squares aren't perfect squares. So it's trying to align off of blurry lines.

Any other thoughts/suggestions are welcome.

[zyxw55]

You are welcome.  Sorry my first suggestion wasn't very helpful.

I better understand your issue.  Have you tried printing in different print modes??  Can you please try printing in draft/econofast mode to see if the issue continues??  If the pens don't seat fully in the carriage then you can end up with some alignment issues.  If you have not also try removing the pens and reseating them.

Would it be possible for you to scan an alignment page and upload here??  I can share with some colleagues for some more help.

Hang in there 🙂

[MIC10]

I'm not techy, so this has be to in very simple, very easy to get to language. My printer has pritned shadowy since the last new cartirage was put in. Please help. I have no idea what to do with the information that is already on this site. Don't know what a pen is or how to print in a different mode. I remember dial up phones and manual typewriters!! Please help! Thanks for your patience.