HP Photosmart C6180 Magenta Inks Not Printing

[Dylhoff]

I have a Photosmart 3210.  It has worked perfectly for several (3?) years on my home network.  It suddenly quit printing Magenta and Light Magenta resulting in awful looking output.  It does not print the Magenta block for either the "Clean printhead" or the "Align Printer" self tests - nor will it print these colors from the computer.  I've followed the power off/reset instructions (although I don't have a # key so can't do the #6 factory reset).  I've not found a solution on the discussion board in the pages I've searched.  I've tried changing both ink cartridges - even bought new ones and none of them print anything at all.  Cleaned the contacts with a water wet cotton swab too.  Both colors quit at the same time.  I can print black text from my computer.  What's next?

[mac402]

I had this issue the magenta and pink in this series tends to dry up in the print head. this is not a easy fix can take some time but their are videos on cleaning them i took it a step further and made a solution of 80% windex and 20% alcohol 70%. and used a just the serenge and pushed 4 cc of fluid threw all the nosles on the print head and were the cartriges go in the top hole. after assemble it took me some time to get the errors off and get the clean printer to work . there is 2 flat conections on the right side of printer i took them off after unpluging it of course  then pluged it in and kept pressing clean print head it took me like a hour to get the ink back into the system and get the ink failure to come off. had a couple times were it self rebooted and flashed warings i just unpluged it . but after all said and done it works like new the print head was pluged. i do not sugest doing this you take a risk of messing it up. but if carefull and have about 8 hours to kill and do care if the old printer gets broken then give i t a try it is tuf f to get apart takes alittle force here and their and broke a couple tabs but for the most part with ink stained hands i am happy it works like new again.. this is a common problem thow and that is what was ronge with mine it would ly one of th ereds in th etest and nothing on regular printing. everything came out green lol. but now it all works here is a link to a guy who worked on a very similar one the only difrence was the way it came apart the sides then back then top come offbefore you can get to the print head their are 2 screws under the lid when you flip the top up. and yes the self test all come back good but it is the print head also i whet to ebay got the refillable ink cartrages and it came with bottles of ink aswell for around $35 and not i can print over 10,000 pages so good deal and well worth it. also it printed like 50 sheets of papper to get all the fluid threw the sytem from adding the cleaning solution.  the peice that hold the print head i also pused the solution threw it aswell. i wish you luck it did work for me i am very pleased with this product for th emost part it will work another few years i hope..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwQsFBvXJ_A

[Mr_Mikey]

Well, for a year or more, my HP C8180 has not printed either of the magentas, and after messing around for a long time, I may have finally found something that works.. NO DISASSEMBLY NEEDED!

I took a syringe with just a very small amount of warm water, and put two or three drops on the white "brush" that I believe is used to clean the print heads.. Just use a VERY SMALL amount of water - you don't want this dripping into the printer.

To access this cleaning brush, I had to start  a print (eg. a self-test page) so the print-head moves, then lift open the printer - the print-head will slide freely now but be careful.  Move it out of the way, and look to the right.

I put a few drops of water there, then ran a few "clean print-head" operations.  I believe that brush provided just enough moisture to "unplug" the print-heads.

Curious to know if this solves it for others.

[Pelican1218]

Interesting.

I will try this fix.

Like you I have had this problem starting about two months after purchase.

I am now using the unit as a scanner only.  I do all my printing on the Brother that I purchased.

[MembersOnly]

Light Magenta and Magenta ink do not print. Insalled all new ink cartridges. Self test diagnostic page says all cartridges are 100% and OK. I tried all the remedial actions suggested: pressed # + 3 to reset to factory settings and reinstalled ink cartridges after disconnecting power for 1 minute. None worked. Know any new tricks? 

[2chow]

Thank you to Elodie9 for helping to narrow problem before more paper and ink are wasted. My printer was working perfectly until it ran out of black and cyan ink. Upon replacement, self test showed black was very streaky and neither Light Magenta nor Magenta boxes showed up. Inks expire: 11/4/16 and 6/11/18.  Print head cleaning helped with streakiness, but not missing colors. Align print head shows black, cyan, blank, yellow, light cyan and light magenta bars, bird looks ok with blue head, orange breast and green wing. Multiple rounds showed steady improvement in black streakiness, but no change in missing Light Magenta/Magenta with self test and missing Magenta with alignment. Tried resetting printer to factory defaults - alignment page showed some focal streaking of black and cyan bars across top, but no improvement in color.  Tried water cleaning the contacts on both catridge and printer and then photocopying a color page - still missing reds for a greenish yellow look and no change in test print/alignment missing colors. Then I tried Elodie9's suggestion to print pink and magenta words using color matching.  Bingo, this showed that the printer is capable of drawing pink/magenta inks.  Could not find a way to "Reset Printing System" as per the tagged solution link. So I tried the next step to verify disk permissions.  Got some errors: Group differs on "Library/Printers/InstalledPrinters.plist": should be 80; group is 0 and Permissions differ on "Library/Printers/In...should be -rw-rw-rw; they are -rw-r--r--.  Repaired permissions. But still no improvement tested trying to photocopy the printout of the pink/magenta words printed by this printer.  The ability to pring pink/magenta when using Color Matching indicates this is a software or firmware problem.  I have never used expired inks and they have always been HP 02 inks.

[powmari]

Thank you. It worked with my Mac. Magenta is no longer MIA.

 It is now 5 years since you posted your solution, but I noticed many people, currently, having this issue. In fact, just two months ago somebody else in this forum thanked you. Does it ever get back to rights, or is it necessary to chose these options for the life of the printer?