Ink dries in a matter of days

[es20490446e]

The HP 78 cartiges are drying in a matter of days, no weeks. Then the colours on prints are wrong till I manually clean the cartrige with peroxide.

The room has normal temperature and humidity. And the cartriges are original directly bougth from HP on Amazon, non expired. I bought a new one and suffers the same issue.

I also tried cleaning the little tongue of the printer in charge of cleaning the cartrige in each bootup without success, and the tongue looks intact.

To me it appears like a defect on the cartriges themselves. Any idea what the cause could be? Thanks in advance.

[Valsimot · Accepted solution]

What is the printer model?

That rubber tongue you cleaned is used to wipe the surface of a printhead during cleaning and printer preparation. 

But when a printer is turned OFF then ink cartridges are parked in like a small rubber pool ( don't know how to describe better) that had rubber that prevents ink from drying. In the picture, you see 2 square rubbers with a hole in the white plastic. You need to check if the rubber is damaged or missing, also there is a spring underneath for better contact between rubber and ink cartridge.

[es20490446e]

Ah! I see. There was more inside there than what I thought, and had to be manually pulled out.

The rubber pool had some dust and old ink on it. I have cleaned it thoroughly.

Lets see if that fixes the issue. Many thank!

[es20490446e]

Sorry, but the problem persists. Only one week after changing the cartrige and cleaning the piece you mentioned, the ink is dry again.

The piece doesn't seem damaged, as I have seen it in photos of the same exact model and it looked the same.

[Valsimot]

When you remove print cartridge for cleaning lower part printhead is it covered with old dried ink or not.

Have you completely disassembled service station and clean it?

When you put back service station in printer turn printer OK to initialize and then turn it OFF check on the right side is rubber pool lifted up to seal print cartridges from drying?

[es20490446e]

When I have a moment I will disasemble the station and show you a photo.

[es20490446e]

The square rubber under the colour cartrigue had fallen, what was invisible till disassembling all the printer. It has been simply a matter of putting it in place again.

Many thanks!