HP Designjet 500 - printhead issue

[mrb2one]

Hi,

We recently purchased a HP Designjet 500 Plus which is now out of warranty and did a test print immediately once it was home and it worked fine.

We have then waited a few weeks to use it again and on the next print an error message came up telling us to replace the printheads. We have bought a full set of 4 brand new printheads which are all within expiry date.

We have installed the new printheads and it still says to replace various printheads ranging from just one through to all of them after every attempt to install them.

We have removed them and cleaned the electrical contacts on the printhead and the carriage with no success.

For each printhead it says 'FAULTY, REPLACE PRINTHEAD'.

Each printhead has a different error code:

Cyan - 0234

Magenta - 0134

Yellow - 0334

Black - 0030

Please can someone please give some advice on how to fix this?

Thanks.

[davidzuts]

Your black printhead is having an electrical issue which is probably causing the other printheads to have what is called Acumen error. The issue could be caused by the printhead itself or by a faulty carriage assembly. Concentrate of the flex connector for only the black in the carriage assembly. With the power off use a coffee filter dampened in water or alcohol and make sure all the nipples on the black flex connector are clean and do not have and breakaway points from the connector. If any have breakaway points, the carriage assembly will need to be replaced. If you still have the old black printhead, try using it and when it asks for replacement keep swapping out the black only a couple of times to see if maybe it will see all of them as good.

[mrb2one]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried cleaning the black flex connector and swapping out the black only but this has not worked and the display still prompts for all 4 printheads to be changed.

There are no visible breakaway points on the carriage assembly.

Out of curiosity, why did you suspect the black printhead specifically was causing the issue?

I have read elsewhere that the firmware may be an issue (our device is version is A.03.07 but the most recent Firmware version is A.04.02)

Would upgrading the firmware likely have any effect on the printhead issue?

I would have tried this already but on the HP website the firmware update is not available on Windows 7 and looks as though I will need to source a laptop running on XP to perform this.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[davidzuts]

Only because the black printhead reports an electrical issue where the others have the same code. As to firmware you can upgrade, just download from the Vista page as firmware is not operating system dependent. If the printer has a gl2 card installed, remove it before doing the firmware upgrade. There is a bug and 50% of the time the firmware upgrade will destroy the gl2 card if installed. You have nothing to lose by upgrading the firmware. If that does not work, then the carriage assembly will need to be replaced.