Brother MFC-J6920DW no ink in the lines

[blue_lazer]

I have this printer that I got for free off Facebook Marketplace. Previous owner said it was left behind by the previous owner of the house and he didn’t want it.

I ran a print head cleaning and then did a nozzle check pattern. No ink, not even the slightest bit unsurprisingly. I tried a cleaning again and did a nozzle check pattern, got a few drops of cyan and black. Printing a few more pages it stopped printing any ink.

I saw a video on YouTube suggesting cleaning the waste ink spittoon and squeegee, which did indeed have a lot of dried ink built up on it.

I then opened up the carriage cover to realize there’s not even ink inside the tubes.

Removing the cover for the waste ink sponge and looking at the other side of the tubes, there’s no ink in it there either except a few drops.

Interestingly, the waste ink sponge is most full of magenta and some black. It looks like a bloody bandage

I thought running a head cleaning should help prime the ink lines, but i tried multiple times and it did not seem to help at all.

And now it is too low on cyan, magenta, and yellow ink. It said ink is too low to print but there is plenty of ink left in the cartridges. Someone on YouTube said you can try putting tape over the sensor window so I try that, I’m surprised this actually worked. Now I wonder what the purpose of the cartridge chip is for.

The black ink is full. There seems to be more than enough ink in the color cartridges to prime the ink lines. I don’t really want to spend money to buy ink for a printer that might not work and end up being trash.

I will buy a syringe later to try flushing warm water in it as the print head is probably also clogged up, no clue how long it has been unused for. Do you think this will help so that there is liquid in the tubes rather than air? Or what else I can try doing to prime all 4 ink lines?

Normally I would pick up free printers and electronics to play around and take apart for fun. But this printer I want to try to get it working as it can print 11 x 17 and from what I’ve read it is very easy to self refill ink.

 

[blue_lazer]

I’m now considering, would it be a good idea to disconnect the hoses, inject water into the print head to clean it, and then try to siphon ink through the tubes using a syringe?

 

[Tisx]

I had a similar issue with a MFC-J6920DW that I picked up that wasn't used in +2 years. I ended up just buying a print head cleaning kit to flush the lines since I wasn't getting any ink on the paper or even when running multiple cleaning cycles. I ended up doing it a couple of times and then letting it sit over night which was able to clear up my magenta. Then just run the nozzle cleaning until the other colors worked. Something else that I did that may help is just clean the print head with a paper towel that I soaked with Windex which helped my pictures not come out like they are faded. Now its print better but I feel like the colors are a bit muted but unsure if thats how it prints or if it could be the ink I'm using.