stupid ass printer Q

Odian

Real stupid, but how do i tell when da catridges are empty,pages are been printed out kind of bluely colour

its a HP deskjet 640c

Thxs

yellum

Theres a little dot on the cartridges showing u, if its not black or a colour its empty, I believe

Odian

Theres a little dot on the cartridges

wota mean? have the carts in my hand? cant see a dot?

Victor

Does it still print _all_ of what you ask it to print?

azezil

some inkjets have a small hole in the top of them, if you blow into it ink should come out.

and of course if the cartridge are empty the page'll come out blank

Oh yeah here's a general tip for hp deskjets, sometimes they say they're out of ink while they're not, the problem is the contacts on the cartridges, rub them with an eraser and they should work fine.

yellum

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/printers/support_doc/bpa02060.html

Odian

Yellum that doesnt apply to the carts that i use.
Still tried it do.no joy

some inkjets have a small hole in the top of them, if you blow into it ink should come out.

There is a hole on the black one,ink comes out,but no hole on the top on the colour

The printer is just takin the pages in,and puttin back out again,totally un printed on,sometimes i get **** like :@{{(&%^$$"£"$"!£££"!!!*+*%_£$$££$£ printed on,but i think thats cause i cancel a page been printed,well been queued up in task bar

Really baffling me
Is the colour one just gone?
best to buy online?

Thxs

Inspector Gadget

It's printing blue? Some of the earlier colour HPs (such as the 640c) had a special photo cartridge that you stuck in instead of the black (I have a 690c myself, somewhere...) - if you left that in instead of the black, it's possible the that your Yellow and Magenta tanks in that cartridge are empty, causing it to print only Cyan (light blue)

(FYI, while light is combined using various intensities of Red, Green and Blue (the RGB system), with a combination of all of these colours producing white light, inks work the opposite way; combine all ink colours, and you get something like black, but not quite. So, colour printers (everything from inkjet printers to printing presses) use the CMYK system instead - these letters stand for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. The last of these four ensures good quality and consistency in black printed as most inks tend to produce a strange brown colour when the CMY inks are mixed together)

Additionally, if the black/photo cartridge is empty, the printer may try to print from the standard (not photo) colour cartridge, so that you at least get a print of some kind; the description in the first paragraph above also applies in this situation.

Finally; I'm pretty sure those HP cartridges have transparent ink tanks (they used to have, anyway), with ink bags and metal foil sheets inside the body of the cartridge; if you can see through the cartridge, it's empty. Try not to shake the cartridge when you remove it to reduce the amount of time you have to wait for the ink to settle.

Gadget

timeout

First try tapping the printhead of the cartrige against your hand or a piece of paper. (hand is better) If no ink comes out of the black or very little then its empty and needs to be replaced. The colour should have blue, red and yellow. If any of these aren't there or don't look as prominent as the others it need s to be replaced.

Some HP's have a tendency not to print if one of the cartriges is dead. Also try just printing something small in each of the colours,black, blue, red, yellow. Seperate pages and see what happens. If you're still no better off try reinstalling the printer.

If all the above fails (even with new cartriges) bring it back to where you bought it coz it should still be under warrenty, them HP 640's are only about a year old.

( i know I have probably back tracked on what some people have said already - but better to be sure)

Odian

I tried just to print a simple word doc with few little clip art as a tester, i no the black isnt empty,so my guess is that the colour one must be,so it wont print at all,its not a photo colour cart.

gonna reinstall it anyways to be sure

Inspector Gadget

Leave the printer alone for a while to let the ink settle in the bottom of the tanks, and, as carefully as you can, remove the cartridge without shaking it. The colour cartridges have three separate ink tanks in them, arranged side-by-side, and running the full depth (i.e. front to back) of the cartridge. If you look at the cartridge from the front or the back and can see that one third, two thirds or all of it are empty, then this corresponds to one tank, two tanks or three tanks, respectively.

Gadget