Hello, I'm new, I have a problem with HP3520 printer

[RuthELF]

Hi everyone. I'm new here, a friend also in Ireland told me about this site. I'm mostly just a domestic user, nothing fancy beyond printing photos and other general stuff at home.

I wonder can anyone help with a weird problem with my printer?

The first picture is the screen of my computer with the weather forecast on it. The second picture is what happened when I printed it.

It's ok for ink but it's only printing some things but not others. Like it printed the numbers under the colour code for the rainfall levels, but not most of the other text. But it printed the grey parts of the figures like the rain clouds, which suggests it's not a black ink issue. I'm guessing it's software rather than printer hardware related.

The ink cartridges are nearly new (HP original, not some kind of refill) and not much used.

I also tried to photocopy a text table, and got only bits of the original. Then I scanned the same document, put it in powerpoint as a picture/object, and it printed perfectly fine (not shown here). Weird again.

It's a HP Deskjet 3520, several years old I think, but was printing ok last week.

Thanks!

 

[The Hat]

The first picture is the screen of my computer with the weather forecast on it. The second picture is what happened when I printed it.

Try saving the web page as a jpeg first, then print from that jpeg..

 

[PeterBJ]

@RuthELF I also have an HP DJ 3520 and I had no problems printing your uploaded .png file. I think your printer and cartridges are OK as all colours look to be printing. Notice colour scale and black text.

But you could verify that your printer is OK by printing a "Print Quality report" from the display menu:

Arrow down to Settings - OK- Arrow down to Tools - OK- Arrow down to Print Quality Report- OK.

The test print should have one black stripe and normal strength C M Y stripes and light C M Y stripes and text printed with pigment black.

I found the Irish Met. office page and made a screenshot, inserted that in Windows Paint, printed the resulting .png file with the HP DJ 3500 and scanned the resulting print with the scanner in the HP. I had no problems. If you are a Windows user I could make a step-by- step instruction for printing screen dumps with the HP If necessary .

 

[RuthELF]

Thank you both for replying.

Peter, I tried the print quality report like you suggested. It seems to print fine for colour but missing black.

I also printed a page from Powerpoint with the Met Eireann graphic inserted as a picture. Now the graphic prints relatively ok including the black/grey. The red text in a text box prints ok. But the black text "testing" in a text box prints as very faint grey (this also happened with lines in Excel).

I also printed a photo (the bird) with a fair bit of grey tone in it. That printed fine...just to tease me maybe!! I'm no expert but to me that suggests the printer (and its nozzles etc) itself is ok, which suggests the trouble is with the software somehow...but in that case, why does a black and white copy, that has nothing to do with any computer file, give trouble too??

I guess I could insert everything as a picture or object and then print it, as a work-around, but there's obviously something wrong if that's the only way to make a simple black and white copy!

I'm hoping these new pictures might be clues for someone to shed light on this mystery...much appreciated if you can.

 

[PeterBJ]

The printer has got one pigment black cartridge. This is only used on plain paper. It has also got 3 dye colour cartridges. They are used for printing colour on both plain paper and photo paper. Black and grey tones on photo paper are mixed from the three dye colours, no pigment black is used on photo paper. Grey tones on plain paper are also mixed from the three dye colours. This explains why the heron prints OK and the graphics in the ppt prints acceptably. Pigment black is also used for B/W copying. This explains why B/W copy doesn't work.

Pigment black is missing so if the cartridge is not empty and needs replacement then try cleaning the print head: Arrow down to Settings - OK -Arrow down to Tools- OK - Arrow down to Clean Printhead - OK.

After the cleaning a page is printed. This should show 5 paragraphs of text with pigment black in various sizes and at the bottom C-M-Y-B-G-R (R might look a bit orange) squares.

 

[randy11a]

PeterBJ, thanks for info.