DesignJet T830 Printhead(?) Issues

[CadenSuplita]

Hello everyone, I've been having peculiar issues with my office's DesignJet T830, and was hoping someone might have some info.

Let me start from the top: I started my job a couple months ago, so I don't know the full history of this printer. But, I know that it doesn't get used that often, and that a few weeks ago the printer was functional but was having noticeable print quality issues, such as blurry lines and incorrect colors. I ran a diagnostic test sheet and it very clearly printed crisp lines in CYM but the black lines were extremely smudged, and the color blocks had banding. All the online resources said this pointed to a dirty and misaligned printhead. This made sense to me, since I knew the printer didn't get used very often, and cleaned and aligned even less (probably never). However, after running several cleaning and alignment cycles, there was no improvement.

So, I thought that maybe the printhead needed fully replaced. I got the department to buy one, it arrived and I replaced the old printhead. It is worth noting, that the old print head was visibly very dirty with ink. The installation is very easy, just pulling a couple levers and seating it on a carriage, so I'm certain I installed it correctly. After running the initialization cycle, it failed and said the printhead needed reseated. So, I did that. I ran the initialization again and am met with the same error. This is where my problem is today.

Here is something that I think could help diagnose the issue. After the printhead runs through its initialization cycle, there is always a POOL of ink underneath it, covering the contact surface of the printhead and the soft pad that it sits above in it's carriage. Several times I have removed it, manually cleaned it by wiping it off with tissues, and sopping up the pool of ink that was inside the printer, only to have it happen again every time I try reinstalling it. There was a similar pool of ink underneath the old printhead, albeit a lot older and dried. This leads to me think that this is an issue not with the printhead itself, but is an issue with the printer that is causing the printhead to malfunction, but that's just my intuition. I've attached some photos below of that may be helpful.

The new printhead seated in the carriage.What the printhead looks like after running the initialization cycle

Please, if anyone has experienced and fixed this issue before, give me some guidance. If I could fix this without needing to hire a technician, I would be the hero of my department! 🙂