Epson R2000 - priming problem

[racing_green]

The beginning of the story is here: https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...t-head-rest-possible-waste-ink-problem.13923/

At some stage photo black ink cartridge was not pushed all the way down. Printer didn't notice it, because electronic is in a separate "cradle", so the air got it. I did head cleaning, printed 2-3 black pages and all went back to normal. Some cleaning (*) and prints later I realised that I have _almost_ zero photo black ink - it was really close to dry cartridge. I was playing with profiles to get nice colours, but the results were getting worse and worse. Another check pattern print and there is no photo black ink coming out of the printer. I tried cleaning, printing black pages, I left it over night undisturbed - nothing works. Does in make any sense to inject ink directly into the plastic nozzle or try to apply overpressure through the cartridge with vent hole blocked?

My cartridges looks like those:

(*) I think I had some dried ink under the head -check patterns suggest that

 

[racing_green]

More info: the black square at bottom-left also started to look different - I have no idea why.
Attached hoto sthows the details. PK added in gimp. Top pattern yesterday morning, bottom one a few minutes ago.

Any help will be appreciated - I enjoy fixing things, but I'm running out of ideas.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think that's all a problem of the ink flow from the cartridge, don't blow into the refill hole, the ink may escape where you don't like it in the bottom of the printhead carriage. I was using similar looking cartridges with my P400 (which is currently out of order) I had more problems with the chips , the ink flow was o.k. You may get a set or at least some cartridges as 3rd party versions, use them to test your printer at the problem colors; you may be able to use such cartridges as well as refill carts with a resetter as long as you don't let the ink level drop to zero. You may transplant the chips as well to the refill cartridge if you get them working again, or or weigh the full 3rd party cart and you do the refill to that weight again since most of those are not transparent.

 

[racing_green]

Thank you!
Looks like filling the cartridge up to the top made a difference. Before I tried with ~50% and after topping up to ~100% the printer seems to produce black. Tests in progress..

Lessons learned: when experiencing problem with a single colour - top up the cartridge to the max before trying to prime the system.

The problems with chips you mentioned: they don't seems to work at all and the vendor is saying that I have to check level manually. The reset doesn't work either Idea of transplanting chips is new to me and sounds very interesting. I have the old refillable cartridges and I think the chips were better. And probably the old cartridges work as well - the problem was with clogged waste ink, not with the cartridges.

Any advice on the few missing lines on the check print? Should I ignore them? I tried to clean it with pad soaked in magic bullet placed under the head, but those 7-8 gaps in cyan are still there. I can try pumping the magic bullet through the head again...