Designjet 500 - Magenta cartridge constantly needing replaced although printing in b&w

[Ciara333]

Hi all,

We are having the following issue with our Designjet 500 plotter.  Although 99% of the time plot in greyscale, I am continually having to replace the Magenta cartridge.  This year I have replaced it 4 times.  I always use HP genuine cartridges. After about 3 months of replacing, a black X appears on the dialogue box with the error message to replace the cartridge.  It's not being used and replacing it everytime is turning out to be very expensive.  Have anyone any other suggestions?  Can I turn off colour printing altogether?  What might be the problem?  Many thanks! Ciara

[D Hook]

And I'm guessing you're not seeing any leaks anywhere?

How does the magenta consumption match up to the other colors?  How many cartridges have you replaced of the other colors?

Even printing in gray scale the printer will still use all the colors to produce the image.  

[Ciara333]

Thank you very much for replying.  No leaks that I can see.

 The black cartridge is sitting nearly empty but is still printing away.  The other colour cartridges haven't been changed in over a year but the magenta just seems to last a couple of months and all of a sudden show up as needing to be replaced.  And although it is costly, when I do replace it starts working again.  I feel I am actually disposing of full cartridges that aren't being recognised as full due to some error.  I've cleaned all around it but still no difference,  

[D Hook]

The next time you buy a new magenta cartridge, before you insert it, you might try weighing it on a small food scale to see how much it weighs when full.  That will give you a bench mark to compare to another cartridge when it asks to be replaced.  Short of actually breaking open the cartridge and looking at the bag inside, it's the only way I've found to get a good idea of how much ink is left inside.  It's possible that HP might have had a poor batch of magenta cartridges.  Not likely but possible.

They do make a syringe tool that is used to draw ink through the tubes.  Maybe it would work to draw ink out of the cartridge as well.  But it's a $39 tool (last time I bought one) and not sure that will tell you what you need to know.  I suppose you could use it to try to draw out the remaining ink and compare it to what the label says it should contain and see if you're getting all the ink you're paying for.  

You could also try an after-market ink cartridge, just to see if that makes a difference.  Ebay has several sellers and I've bought from them for a Designjet 800 in the past with good results.  Be sure they have the correct chip that will be able to be read by your printer.

If you haven't noticed any leaks, the ink has to be going someplace.  If it's leaking you'd know it by now because it will make a huge mess somewhere inside the printer or it would be smearing on the print.  There's also the possibility that the settings you're using are causing the ink consumption to be high just on that one color.  As I mentioned earlier the printer will sometimes use all the colors to print, even in gray scale.  

Maybe someone who has had the same experience will chime in with other suggestions.