MX700 Will Not Print Black

[mikling]

Do not waste time and effort if the printer is under one year. It needs to have some mechanical work performed and if it is still on warranty, take it in immediately.

 

[tcsnyc]

Purchased 10/20/2008 so thats a no-go there

 

[ghwellsjr]

I think you have concluded that the purge pump is working so the next thing is to see if there is ink flow through the print head. When you remove the pigment black cartridge, do you see black ink on inlet screen on the print head? If not, you may have an internal clog.

Either way, remove the print head, take a paper towel folded in half twice, put some Windex on it and blot the print head, nozzles down, onto the wet paper towel. You should see ink rising out of all the inlet ports when you press the print head into the wet paper towel. If you don't, that suggest that you have an internal clog. Let us know what happens.

 

[tcsnyc]

Blotted the print head on both the inside and the bottom and ink came out. Seems to be flowing OK. Put everything back together then tried again and the bottom of the nozzle had a good amount of ink this time. Im really confused about this. It stopped working when a blank ink cart ran out, and as I have mentioned before its not like it only prints partial black, there is no black at all coming out

 

[tcsnyc]

just thinking out loud here. I went through these problems with the canon i9900 and after windex flush and many other steps it seemed to work itself out. might there be some driver corruption or some issue with the computer communication to the printer?

 

[ghwellsjr]

You can disconnect your printer from your computer and test it like that. This problem has nothing to do with any drivers on your computer.

Do I understand correctly that after you put the print head back in your printer and did a nozzle check, the bottom part of it printed? But then you say it doesn't print pratial black, there is no black at all? Please clarify.

 

[tcsnyc]

Exactly, magenta, cyan and yellow all print perfectly and black is completely absent, no partial or anything.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Blotted the print head on both the inside and the bottom and ink came out. Seems to be flowing OK. Put everything back together then tried again and the bottom of the nozzle had a good amount of ink this time. Im really confused about this. It stopped working when a blank ink cart ran out, and as I have mentioned before its not like it only prints partial black, there is no black at all coming out

Assuming that your purge system is working, based on your prior statements, the question we have been trying to resolve now is whether you have an electrical problem or an ink flow problem. If it is correct that once this problem started happening, you have never, ever, not even once, seen any black printing on any nozzle check, and if it is correct that you can see moving black ink on the inlet port when you do the blot test, then this is pretty conclusive that you have an electrical problem and you will need to get a new print head.

My only point of confusion from post #14 is what you meant by "Put everything back together then tried again and the bottom of the nozzle had a good amount of ink this time". What did you mean by that?

 

[tcsnyc]

I meant ink from the port on top of the ink head. When I did the blotter test i could barely see any ink on the screen of the print head but when I blotted it plenty of ink came out. I pretty much do all suggestions twice just to make sure, when I went to do the blotter test again the screen of the print head visibly had a fair amount of ink on it, leading me to conclude there was no clog.


It is correct that once this problem began there has not once been any black printing on the nozzle check

 

[ghwellsjr]

There is an excellent chance that a new print head will get you going again.