Bug report for Smart Tank 7305 Printer firmware

[ThomasKorimort]

I found a problem with the firmware of the Smart Tank 7305 printer. I had a case of after about half a year of printer use suddenly the printer was not printing anymore from the cyan color tank. Test pages showed clearly that this was not a problem with ink partially being blocked in the nozzles, but totally having stopped. The printer was not showing any error message though. Thus the reasonable way to proceed was to replace the color printhead. But the problem was, as the printer seemingly did not recognize an error with the printhead, it did not park the carriage in the middle automatically, thus making it impossible to open the carriage as the carriage parked in the side position would not allow access to the button to unlock the printheads to replace them. I was suspecting that there must be a way to park the carriage in the middle by pressing a button or something like that. But neither in the manual there was any hint about such a function nor was the customer service via chat able to provide any useful information. Thus the case had to be solved by replacing the printer completely as a guarantee case.

The problem seems to be clearly that there is lacking support to the customer or lacking implementation in the printer of a function to park the carriage in the middle on command instead of only by procedure (e.g. protocol on error message).

[Gaya1239 · Accepted solution]

Hi @ ThomasKorimort,

Welcome to HP Support Community.  

Thank you for posting your query, I will be glad to help you.

HP Smart Tank 7305 All-In-One printer. The problem involves the cyan color tank, and despite troubleshooting efforts, the printer stopped printing from this tank without displaying any error messages.

Upon further investigation, I discovered that the printer did not automatically park the carriage in the middle position, which is necessary for accessing and replacing the printhead. This created a significant challenge as the carriage was parked on the side, preventing access to the printhead release button.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Print jobs from the cyan color tank ceased without any error messages.
2. Test pages indicated a complete blockage rather than a partial ink issue.
3. Attempted to replace the color printhead, but the carriage did not park in the middle automatically.
4. Unable to manually access the printhead release button due to the carriage's side position.

Expected Behavior: The printer should recognize the issue with the cyan color tank and automatically park the carriage in the middle, allowing the user to access and replace the printhead without complications.

Actual Behavior: The printer did not display any error messages and failed to park the carriage in the middle position, making it impossible to replace the printhead manually.

1. Implement a manual function to park the carriage in the middle position, accessible through the printer's control panel or software interface.
2. Improve error detection to notify users when a printhead issue occurs and prompt the printer to park the carriage in the middle.

I hope this helps. 

Take care and have a good day.-

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