HP Designjet 500 Worn Printhead error & Cartridge Replacement required

[daveytee999]

My Designjet has been working flawlessly (with the exception of the odd 21:10 error every couple of months, fixed by simply switching off and on).

The issue I have now is that yesterday I printed something out but there was no black coming out on the print.

I did a troubleshoot and it printed the colours but no black.

I tried printing pure black rectangles but the only came out a shade of blue.

Then, for some reason, it started saying I needed to replace the cyan cartridge (which is a genuine HP one) and it keeps saying this.

I get a warning that the printheads need aligning and at first it tried to do this, but got confused and started again when it realised it couldn't see black ink on the page, presumably.

Now it doesn't even get through doing the head alignment because of the error with the Cyan cartridge.

I have replaced the printhead (albeit with one that's out of warranty - but one that hasn't been used) and it constantly says the printhead is worn out.

It then came us with a 21:10 that I couldn't get rid of but saw a YT video about taking the service station out which I did and cleaned out and that error seems to have gone. 

I'm no stranger to troubleshooting tech issues but am a bit stumped on this one.

Doubt it's relevant but after the service station went back in, the printer wanted to prime the printheads - it got so far but I don't have the priming heads so it couldn't do anything. Not sure why it would want to do this - the only electrical connection i removed to get the service station out was the motor connection (and the printer was switched off) so I don't understand why it thinks it's starting afresh.

Any ideas appreciated.

[HarryCR]

Hello @daveytee999 

The original issue definitely was related to the printheads, when the colors are not printing properly is not related to the ink cartridges.

Now for some reason de ink supply station is having issues reading the new cyan ink that you installed.

About the Service Station error 21:10 you mentioned happened every couple of moths a manual cleaning wont prevent a problem with it because this error is related to the service station motor, could be related to the firmware in some scenarios however as per your description about the purgers something strange happened and the printer now is requesting the tubes to be purge, after replacing any parts will be necessary to calibrate the new and other related parts.

My suggestion is try ordering the purgers if you can which is the easiest thing you can do however if the printer still doesn't read the cyan ink is better to contact a service provider certified in Designjet machines to check it because it is also an older machine for HP and I don't know if you still can get new parts besides the consumables.

[daveytee999 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the response Harry. 

Couple of things,  first the 21:10 code - not 100 percent sure but that has gone now, hopefully for good.  I did find that the wheel thing (couldn't really understand what it did without taking the whole unit apart) was quite hard at times to spin and when spinning the motor manually with the shaft between my fingers - after cleaning as much as I could with isopropyl alcohol and other wipes it did seem a lot easier to move. 

As for the print head issue,  I managed to resolve by getting hold of a replacement one (out of date,  but still did the firmware update using Windows7 laptop).

I was sure it wouldn't work as the printhead in had only 4% use and none of the others had much more and this was the reason I didn't want to shell out 60 pounds for a new replacement (the printer only cost me £100 three years ago!)

Anyway it worked fine so that's good  is be interested to know why the printer thinks the heads are worn out with next to no use on them,  though they are all of of date for warranty (surely didn't make any difference in the heads,  yes I can understand ink has a shelf life).

Does anyone think there's any point in sending them off to someone to be remanufactured rather than simply binning them?

As for the cyan ink problem,  the thing i think might have solved it is that i took the left cover of and reseated the two ribbon cables in the pcb.  Like like someone has been in there before as the ferrite emi protector did not have the cables going through,  rather it was placed on top line someone had forgotten to put cables back through at some point. 

Hope this info is of use to someone else. 

Dave.