Black ink not printing, Colour fine?

cormie

Hi,
My Canon MP370 printer has stopped printing anything that needs the black ink, which is a real pain. It will print colour fine and if I change text to 80% grey, it will print this fine (because this uses the colour cartridge too). First thought it was because I bought a non canon cartridge but have since bought a canon and a few others and still the same. It does print, but very vague.

Has anyone experienced this before and what should I do? If anyone has experienced it with the MP370, even better

Any feedback appreciated!

aidan_walsh

Clean the print heads?

Biggins

Also after that try on the underside of the ink cartridge (the shiny small part), wiping it with a soft dry cloth with a bit of pressure (but not too hard) a few times in one direction then the other.
It might just be something as simple dry ink clogged.

Have you run the clean heads function which should be incorporated into the driver of the printer (if its any good)?

cormie

tried all the maintenance utils on it and no luck

Biggins, do you mean wipe the cartridge or something else?

Biggins

The underside of the cartridge.
Sometimes it works.

How old was the cartridge before you used it again? I mean, was there a long time period when it was not in use?

cormie

I forget, it started happening ages ago and I've tried a few brand new cartridges since and still the same results. I just tried a black photocopy of my laser card (so it should have come out fully dark, but just got 4 pretty much identical streaky lines):



I took out the thing the ink cartridges slot into and gave it a wipe before I printed the above.:(

Biggins

Well the fault I think is not with the printer driver. The lines of what its supposed to be drawing are clearly getting to where they are supposed to be.
As you've tried multiple cartridges and gotten the same result, that just leaves the printer itself.
I could be wrong in this assessment, others here will help with my conclusion, but I suspect that the printer itself is at fault.
If that is the case, it might mean you replacing it.
Have you another printer or can you get your hand on one? Set it up and test to see if your items go to that printer correctly. That will also help to narrow down the possibility (very remote in this case) that its a fault of the pc (I suspect not).

cormie

I doubt it's the PC as it comes out different when I choose Quality: high/standard/draft, I think draft comes out the best would you believe!

When you say the lines are where they are supposed to be, it was a laser card, so the whole corner should be pretty much black, but there are 4 distinct lines with 3 distinct white gaps between them so it's missing totally the white gaps too

Biggins

I mean if the same results are the same (lines were they are supposed to be, fully coloured or not) no matter what cartridge you use, then the fault will lie with the printer rather than the cartridges.

Ther is a possibility that the circuitry on the printer motherboard is faulty, sending wrong messages to the print heads at periodic times.
(A connection of another printer will just confirm that the data is being received right and printed correctly right to the heads)

cormie

I'm pretty sure that the laptop wont be at fault, but I don't have another printer to connect it to at the moment

Tony H

Ask in this forum Cormie ,
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/index.php
great info there on printers esp Canon

mobby

I had a similer problem with a HP printer found out there was a Black waste ink container that had to be replaced, printer would work fine with the tri colour cartridge be it not with the back ink cart in place.
Some printers need to be taken apart to get at this container. in fack have a look at this may or may not help http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/inkjet/29693