Ink skipping when printing

[SupermansLois]

We have been through 5 color & black ink cartridges within the past 6 months and have only printed about 6 pieces of paper within the last 2 months since I replaced the ink cartridges but the ink is skipping again after the 6th paper printed. We rarely print, maybe one or two pieces of paper once a week. I have replaced the ink cartridges, aligned them according to the printer's directions. It prints perfectly fine until we've printed about 6 pieces of paper. What we print is a simple black and white excel document spreadsheet. Not even a big spreadsheet though the size and color shouldn't matter. I have the printer settings defaulted to just normal print quality, color is selected as ink but black is what is mainly used. Right now I just printed the 6th piece of paper after I put brand new HP color and black ink cartridges in and the ink is skipping. Last week, printed perfectly fine. NO ONE has used the printer since. There is 3/4 full color ink and 1/2 full black ink that shows on the printer's LED screen as well as the HP program on my computer. I removed the cartridges and they feel mostly full and they are also clean so there is no smearing or anything on the paper, its just skipping lines. It was the same 2 months ago when I put these new cartridges in. No errors come up on the printer, no ink cartridge errors or paper errors, nothing. I try to print something different with color, it skips ink as well almost as if the cartridges are out of ink but they're not. Ink is not cheap and we don't "bootleg" the ink so there's no reason for this. I have troubleshooted everything I can. I have ran the align, cleaning cartridges and cleaning printer options and nothing helped. I have cleaned the cartridges by hand, I have checked the spooler, cleaned what I can get to inside the printer itself and nothing I do fixes the problem. We've had HP printers for years and I haven't come across this many problems with a 2 year old printer and nearly full ink cartridges that prints with missing/skipped ink on it. I have also downloaded the HP Print and Scan Doctor program and it has not helped. We bought this printer in 2017 and while the warranty expired we have been having this issue for over a year now. The only thing that fixes this problem seems to be replacing the ink cartridges with new ones but we cannot afford to keep replacing 1/2-3/4 full ink cartridges for 6 pieces of paper. We are looking into buying another printer that is not HP but we still need to print regardless. Does anyone have any solution or assistance of something that I have not done? I would appreciate it the help.

[8lives]

Get a plastic dish and put 1/4" of hot water in it.  
Remove the black cartridge and put the ink printhead down into the water.  
Soak for five minutes, then remove and clean/dry the contacts with a lint free wipe like a coffee filter.
Install back in the printer.
Try printing.