HP 6100 CISS priming the cartridges

That’s the weird thing about any CISS, there’s always something that will go wrong right when you least expect it too.

That’s the nature of the beast..

I'm a little vague on the details here as there's a lot of information that could be misinterpreted in your various posts so bear with me if I've gotten some details wrong.

From what I can tell your problem is that air keeps migrating into the CIS feed tubes and that in itself shouldn't be a problem but they do act as an indicator of problems so here's a few things to look for:

1. When you print, which way does the air bubble in the tubing travel, if at all?
   
   • If it's towards the printer that's good
   • If it doesn't move at all, that's not great and may indicate a blockage
   • If it moves towards the bulk ink reservoir (ie: away from the printer) you have an air leak somewhere
     
2. When the printer is resting, does the ink bubble travel backwards (even if it travelled forwards when printing)?
   If yes then chances are that you have a very small leak somewhere in the CIS loop. Places to check are:
   • Tube to cartridge joint and seal
   • Rubber seal in cartridge ink outlet (particularly look for plastic fragments, damage to the rubber, detrius such as hair, grit or similar that may be creating a path for air to ingress in)
     

If the air is only appearing when you reinstall the system into the printer and/or are messing with the location of the reservoirs that's normal... It's the stuff going on when the printer is in use or over time when not in use that's important.

Hope the above is useful in determining if you have a real problem or not..

I tried the suction syringe and it worked at first, but I then had the air reappear in the line.
I bought some adapter tips and drew air/ink through the ink ports. This time it worked and the air has not returned.
But then the printer would not recognize the cartridges so I removed them, installed old cartridges and then re-installed the ciss and it recognized them.

Now: The printed alignment page comes out beautiful, but regular print jobs come out with a hodge-podge of colors and smears.
The black ink works perfectly.

ttgfish said:

I tried the suction syringe and it worked at first, but I then had the air reappear in the line.
I bought some adapter tips and drew air/ink through the ink ports. This time it worked and the air has not returned.
But then the printer would not recognize the cartridges so I removed them, installed old cartridges and then re-installed the ciss and it recognized them.

Click to expand...

Well it's good to hear that you've gotten past a number of hurdles so that's a real plus..

Now: The printed alignment page comes out beautiful, but regular print jobs come out with a hodge-podge of colors and smears.The black ink works perfectly.

Click to expand...

Chances are high that your printhead cleaning/resting pad is full of gloopy ink that is soiling the underside of the printhead when it goes into resting mode. We used to have a similar issue with the HP K5400 where the printhead quality page would be great because the printhead would have had a clean and then immediately printed that one page. As soon as the printhead went for a rest the junk would smear it, crud would soil the bottom of the printhead and the next output would be a mess.

I'd get some cotton buds and possibly even some tampons or similar to soak up as much of that crud and give the area a good solid clean. Then we move on to the next problem...

OK, good plan. I will raid my wife's box of tampons! Never thought I would say that...
It has become a challenge to get this thing running 100%. I will prevail!