Deskjet 3520 e-All-in-One printer not printing black ink

[rbertr4]

My grandparent's printer has been out of color ink for the past little bit. They were finally able to get new cartridges, and actually needed to print something today (which they haven't had a need for in a while). The black cartridge still had some ink in it, so we only changed out the colored ones. When I went to copy something as a test, only the colored parts were printed. We went ahead and bought a new black cartridge while we were out. I changed it out as soon as we made it back, still nothing. I did clean off the printer head with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol, like I did with all of the colored ones. Nothing. I ran the cleaning process through the printer. Nothing. Tried the "Clear smudges" option on it, nothing. Re-aligned it, nothing. Nothing seemed to work. The cyan, magenta and yellow are working fine, it is only the black. Oh, and I made sure the vent head was not clogged. I did all of these steps with the used and new cartridges and have gotten the same results. I've done everything I could think of, or that I could find online when searching the issue. If anyone has any ideas that we have not tried, please let me know. I am all but certain that their printer is now out of warranty, they have had it for a little while now.

Please and thank you!!!

[MKazi · Accepted solution]

@rbertr4

Thanks for reaching out to us on HP Support Forums. I came across your post and would like to assist.

I understand that you have an HP Deskjet 3520 e-All-in-One Printer and it does not print the black color. I have read your post comprehensively and appreciate the steps you have performed and have certainly done a good job. Fabulous analysis. Spectacular diagnosis of the issue before posting. Kudos to you for that.

The evidence points towards the printhead issue. I suggest you to reach out to our HP phone support to explore the available service options for your HP printer. 

Hope this works out. Let me know if you have any further questions. Cheers! 🙂

[Jeff6678]

I Have a all in one printer HP Photo smart 7520 and it is also not printing the black ink. my story is the same as yours. Replace the colors first, then the black ink days later. Ive done everything. clean it ,reboot, changeto another black ink cartridge. very frustrating inks exspensive, any helpfull ideas????

[MKazi]

@Jeff6678

Welcome to HP Support Forums. 🙂 

Thank you for posting on HP Forums, MKazi is at your service. 

I understand that you have an HP Photosmart 7520 Printer and it does not print in black. You've done a remarkable job performing the steps. 

I suggest you to review the steps from this HP document and check if you have performed these steps. Especially step 4, step 7 and step 8. 

If the issue persists after performing these steps then please contact our HP phone support team to check the available service options. 

Feel free to let me know if you have any further questions. All the best! 🙂

[JohnB1960]

I have had this problem twice in the past year (purchased 2012) and each time HP recommended purchasing a new printer. I found that, if I use MS Word to change the print colour in the document, it would print.

After a week or two of doing this, printing in black ink returned to working at least close to normally. 

[Fifietta]

It may seem a silly question, but what colour did you change to? Or did you simple re-set  it as black?

[cboll]

This printer is a piece of **bleep** that will eventually fail, theres about 1000 forums about this thing. For everyone, it eventually stops printing. Its planned obsolescence / will never buy HP again.