F4280 Not printing black ,or colours, correctly

[mr benn]

Hi all. I am having issues printing in black or colour on my HP F4280 all in one printer , as follows :
Black - the printer goes thru the motions, but just a blank page comes out
Colour - it prints the picture, but the colours are all distorted

These are good cartridges, and have been tried in another printer.
I have tried the printer on another pc , with the same results.
I have tried the test print option. It just a red triangle at the top , then 3 rows of small blue squeares at the bottom
I have cleaned the print cartridges.
I have updated the software on my pc.

Im convinced its a hardware issue, but dont know how to adress it. I saw another HP printer issue, where cleaning the "print heads" was the fix, but I cant see where to do that on this printer - if they have any.

Appreciate any advice, as I really like the printer and dont want to scrap it , or look for a replacement .

 

[PeterBJ]

The printer is a two cartridge printer using the HP 60 black and colour cartridges (US) or HP 300 black and colour cartridges (EU). These cartridges are difficult to refill and get working reliably in my experience, especially if they have been run dry. I guess my success rate is around 50%.

A problem that often occurs is ink starvation. One or more colours will not print properly after refill or the cartridge prints a few pages OK and then fails. An airlock in the nozzle chamber is often the cause of this problem and a priming tool to remove the air can help. Even if the cartridges were OK in an other printer, they could have developed a problem with ink flow, so I suggest to make a stamp test to verify that ink is fed to the nozzles. See this post for the stamp test.

Another common problem with the HP two cartridge printers is a bad electrical contact between the cartridges and the cartridge carriage. You could try cleaning the golden contact pads on the cartridges and the golden contacts in the cartridge carriage with a rag or kitchen paper/paper towel moistened with isopropyl alcohol or an electronics contact cleaner. Here is a thread about such contact problems.

I don't think the problems are software related. You could verify that software is not the cause of the problem by using the printer as a stand alone copier and make a colour and a B/W photocopy.