HP Photosmart 7520 Printer Won't Print Black

[Kamnikar]

Hello,

I recently was able to print in black ink on my HP Photosmart 7520 printer.

I was printing and the black ink ran out so I changed the cartrige.  I tried to print and no black was printing so I change the other black ink cartrige so BOTH ink cartriges are brand new.  The printer will not print anything in just black nor will it print black when I print in color.  All other ink cartriges work.

I ran the printer cartriges cleaner, reset the printer and even reboot the entire system.

Please help ASAP as I am dead in the water and need to print reports.

Thank you for your help.

You can call me at

[edit]  if it would be easier to walk me through the trouble shooting over the phone.

[edit]

[dclaudew]

Hi, I'm just a consumer not a techie. In my opinion, ink jet printers develop trouble when they are dry. There is the standing advice to print one page once or twice a week to keep your printhead moist. A dry printhead will clog. A bone dry printhead will overheat and fry. I'd like to determine if your black is dry or fried. Can you print anything with any of your existing black cartridges (old cartridges, recent cartridges, but don't buy a new cartridge yet)? That is, can you scan in black, receive a black fax, run a printhead cleaning and get a black report, align and get a black report, print from Word, snip and print, print a color document in "greyscale," anything? That might be Step 2, to see where black works (if anywhere) and where it does not work. (Step 1 is to turn everything off and then restart.) As we move along, do you have any ink-refill tools, such as a syringe or bulk black dye ink? These refill tools and 4 bottles of ink are incredibley cheap, say well under $10. I ask because depending on your printhead, you might put a tiny 1ml or so of black ink into your syringe, and test to see if black ink drips OUT from the printhead when you push new ink IN with the syringe. Ink should be like electricity or brake fluid, so the moment you push from one end, ink should flow from the other end. I personally use HP Subscription Ink, but I do have bottles of the 4 colors, gloves, and ink-jet syringes. Step 3 might be to re-install your driver, unlikely to help but the latest driver can't hurt either assuming you use genuine ink. That is your assignment: How dry is your black, meaning can it do any printing, can your printhead leak black if you push new black into the black port, or is your black printhead completely fried from running dry?

[Cheron-Z]

@Kamnikar

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Forums. I'm sorry to inform you that your post has needed some editing to remove personal information. From our Rules of Participation:

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[728471]

Simply replaced the black cartridge as always and black will not print. Put another new cartridge in and same thing. cleaned printer heads. no positive result.  

[dclaudew]

Again, we are determining if your new black cartridge will do anything. Can you scan, copy, fax, or print in black? If you go through initial installation, will your printer output the B&W & Color page that says your printer is installed correctly? Your printhead may be fried. You are not fried if your black printhead will initiate, align, clean, print a status sheet, scan, copy, print Word, print Adobe images, or other B&W results. Can you do anything in B&W?

My HP inkjet will not print magenta consistently. I've soaked the printhead in every chemical in the house, to no avail. I assume my magenta jets are fried due to my lack of ink flow. So I don't use the HP when I need bright reds. In your case, a printer without B&W is near useless.

You might try talking to HP Support. Going back to my case, HP contacted me rather me contacting them. They offered an extremely generous settlement that, as a CPA, seemed exhorbinate. I was not trying to bankrupt HP, so I declined. I'm still printing, just not in red on that printer. My point is that if you have a legetimate problem caused by HP rather than by a fried printhead, HP Support will resolve the issue to your satisfaction. Cost of the solution is not an HP concern.

[Checkma2]

 I am also having the same problem.  I just replaced my ink cartridges including the photo black.  I ran the "clean cartridges: featiure directly on the printer as well as the "align printer".  Both were successfull.  I removed the print cartridges and assembly and cleaned the assembly thoroughly with alcohol; dried them thoroughly as well.  Replaced everything and still the black ink will not print.  Colors are extremely light and faded.  When testing a black only copy, nothing prints out.

[dclaudew]

@Checkma2. You ask a difficult question, so this answer may not be a full solution. (1) Before we begin, you might consider an HP Ink Subscription where HP provides you with cartridges that HP guarantees will work. Price is $.03 per page (actually $10 for 300 pages). I see ink prices online for remanufactured cartridges that are, say, $25 for an estimated 400 pages, and you just know you won't get the full 400 pages so your true cost will be even higher than $.0625 per page. Conclusion: HP Subscription Ink is cheap and it transfers all print liability to HP. Now, on with your specific problem. (2) It is never a good idea to remove your new cartridges. That gives your firmware another chance to reject your new cartridges. Do all your cleaning and maintenance before installing new cartridges. With a clean machine, up-to-date firmware, and non-functioning new cartridges return any non-functioning new cartridges to the seller. (3) Having said #2, running the "clean cartridges" feature is a good idea on old cartridges, not new cartridges. (4) I assume you have printed your black-only page by pressing "color" mode to determine that it will print in brown (ie, a mix of magenta, cyan, blue, and black), and again in "black" mode to determine that it will NOT print in black. (5) Do you have genuine HP ink rather than 3rd party ink? While remanufactured cartridges should work, and do work when the cartridges and firmware are compatible, it is possible that if you are using 3rd party ink that you are running a different version of firmware than the cartridge. (6) Consider updating your firmware. You do that by going to the HP subpage for your printer, then clicking on the firmware update. Often you need a temporary wire rather than Bluetooth to conduct the update.  (7) Do you print at least once per week? You do not want a printhead to dry, so you should wet your heads weekly by running at least one page. (8) Have you run dry, so that your black head might have fried itself trying to print when out of moist black ink? (9) I always recommend going online and buying some cheap dye ink, which might cost $10 cif for 4 small squirt bottles of the 4 ink colors. Squirt a little of this bulk dye ink into whatever hole is not working (black for you). Did the cartridge come alive with the new firmware and a squirt or two of dye ink? If yes, put the dye ink into a Zip bag and save it for your next outage. (10) Once a year or so, your local office store or online store might sell a new, full-size, color, inkjet printer for as low as $10 (after rebates and incentives). These cheap printers are slow, but they are great to have as backup when working on your good printer. (11) You seem to have a black problem. Try taking an old cartridge and flushing it (ie, squeeze water into it). Fill the cartridge with distilled water or pure window cleaner (no smells or colorants). Let the cartridge sit in your printer until the clog dissolves. This could be a month. Run a black page every few days to keep the water or window cleaner flowing. (12) Go back to the first idea. Take your 1st month of free HP Subscription Ink. Work with HP to get your subscription ink and firmware up to date. You will be printing at 3 cents per page in no time. If HP can't solve your problem, drop your subscription. Don't worry: HP will solve your problem because they want you as a continuing customer. [Full disclosure: I've tried all the solutions above. I have dissolved clogs within a month. I've brought HP printers back to life. I've had frustrations with 3rd party cartridges. I had (still have) a bag of dye ink and old cartridges for emergencies. For the last 12 months, I've run HP Subscription Ink with zero issues. Nothing besides Subscription Ink makes sense price-wise, frustration-wise, or risk-wise.]