Officejet 6500 will not print black ink from Macintosh

[harrycorvair]

I can't get my printer to use black ink when trying to print from my Macintosh. The text always looks grey. I have tried setting it up for greyscale printing with Use black cartridge only, but I can tell that it is still using only the color cartridges. When I check the cartridge ink levels the black is full but the colors are lower. When I connected the printer up to a windows machine the printing was fine. The blacks were clear and sharp. Then I reconnected it up to my mac and the printing was as I described. Only prints from the color cartridges from the mac so the printing comes out grey and not black. I even tried connecting it up to my Macbook which is running OS 10.5.7. It was once again the same problem. Prints only with the color cartridges and comes out grey. I also tried replacing the black cartridge with a new HP cartridge but that did not help.

I have reinstalled the drivers but that did not change anything.

Any other suggestions? 

[superlight]

I just setup my OfficeJet 6500 and have printed 6 pages today and found all 6 pages have a text which is a light shade of black. If you look at the edges of the text, it is not crisp. I have printed a Print Quality test page and it looks great. Although, each print from any of my Apple/MAC computers comes out looking light and with a slight blurr. I have made sure that I am using the "Best" setting for all prints.

I have found the same results from Excel, MAIL, and a Word document. I just looked at the print quality report and do not know what the line #28 PHA Drops means, but Black is 180000 and the 3 colors are all around 170000.

Does this describe the same problem you are having? Have you had any luck finding a solution?

[dbelardinelli]

Hi there,

Same problem here, and welcome to the ink ripoff club!  same problem here, 2 printers, $200 in ink, and over 3 hours wasted on the phone with "tech" support and still not able to print using black ink only.  What a ripoff!  Tech support people are really nice but so what? A simple driver fix could avoid this problem but HP much rather keep making a fortune selling ink and misrepresenting how the product actually works. 

To those who have just encountered the problem/ripoff, make no mistake, this is not something you will re-installing your software, replacing the cartridges, creating a new printing template or even returning the printer.  I've been through all of that and nothing.  I am absolutely convinced that ths is simply a racket to make you buy more and more ink.  And beware, because HP replaced my printer but your new warranty is only 90 days.

My suggestion, buy a laser printer, black only, ( a lot of other brands out there) if you mostly print black.  If like me, you need the convenience of an all-in-one, buy a refill ink kit and never again over pay for ink you never even intended to be using in the first place.

It would be nice if HP accepted their fault on this issue and simply fixed the driver.

regars,

daniel

[dbelardinelli]

Hi There,

Try this little trick, a happy accident...  This worked on a Mac, not sure about PCs.

Go to your Print & Fax preferences, click on Printer Setup... on the pulldown menu choose Printer Model... Go down to HP and choose HP LaserJet 4 series,

I picked this arbitrarily to see what happended and  when you go back to Text Edit, Preview or word and click print, you will notice that your printing options have changed... You won't have the Paper Quality menu anymore or the option to printing in color, you can tweak some settings under Printer Features, but even by just clicking Print under "Standard" I finally got text to print in black ink, no more grey, or traces of color ink...  

you will need to choose your actual model again if you wanna print color, but I've been printing a bunch of pages using only black ink.  Let me now if this helps.

Regards,

db

[gilbertriley3]

Great solution using the Laser option, but apparently from all of the forum posts I've seen, this is a problem across the board for HP.  TOO BAD THEY CAN'T come up with a legitimate solution.

Thanks for warning me about the Tech Support.

This problem is mostly an annoyance...  NOT.

I have a similar problem with my OfficeJet J4680.

I have my printer set up to print GREYSCALE - BLACK CARTRIDGE ONLY, yet lately, my color cartridge has been low, my black cartridge is full, and when it goes to print it prints half the page in black, then switches to color (greyish red), after which it let's me know that color cartridge is low.... What's up with that? 

[Gift]

db,

Great idea. Do you have to already have the Laser Jet 4 listed in your printer menu? How can you add more options to the printer menu without having or having had the printer? I tried it with my previous printer, Canon iP1600, and received the message that it couldn't print because the printer was not connected.

[beyond]

i work on a mac at work and had the same problem.

i read the previous posts, and tried selecting "Laserjet 4 series" under printer setup as recommended,

but that exact option is not listed.

the possible Laserjet 4 options are followed by "- gimp" something or "4 plus",

and when trying those, my printer just beeped at me when i tried to print something. fail.

so, i went back into system preferences - print & fax - printer setup - printer model - HP -

and instead of selecting the Officejet 6500 E 3709 follwed by an "a" or "e",

select Officejet 6500 E 3709 followed by an "n".  ta daaa!

without selecting any other options in the print screen, it will still print some things in color

(only yellow showed up for me since i am completely out of cyan and magenta)

but the important part, the text, comes out in black. 

for printing without ANY color at all, in the print screen, in the bottom pull down menu headed with "Copies & Pages",

select: ColorSync - Quartz filter - Black and white.

next i'd like to figure out how to set this up so it automatically selects this option for every print made.

if anyone has ideas, let me know!

[eridderhof]

I was excited that maybe you had hit on a solution. But I already had the "n" option picked. I tried the ColorSync as well. No dice. I opened a file and made sure the text was 100 % black. Still is printing only from color cartridges (it was yellow since the M and C are out).

So I've figured that it just won't use the black cartridge at all when printing. It will use the black when copying. This really sucks because the reason I bought this particular printer was the economical use of ink sited in the reviews. Well, I've barely printed and I'm pretty much out of every ink except black.

[GPSJane]

So how do you get Quartz on to your Mac? I tried to Google for it but found nothing.

[kelpiepower]

I am in the same boat. I bought this printer for the economical ink use, but i have spent more money on colour cartridges than I ever have, especially considering that most of my printing is in black. It sounds like this isn't going to change with this printer so I may have to get a separate printer. This really sucks! I got an All-in-one for a reason. It pisses me off that HP hasn't corrected this problem. They should have at least put the problem on the box so I knew before i bought it.