HP K5400 and CIS

[MitchG]

I had problems with our K5400 and a CIS about 3 months ago, it stopped printing. I bought factory cartridges and the printer went back to normal and started printing again but about 3 days later the print heads clogged, I am gun shy now and need to get the CIS working again, any suggestions.

TIA,

Mitch

 

[Tin Ho]

CIS tends to clog or damage HP/Canon print heads when it malfunctions. You can replace HP ink cartridges and get a new print head on the new ink cartridge. But if the CIS is not fixed you will probably need to keep replacing ink cartridges. Your CIS is not feeding sufficient ink to the print head. It is the primary cause of clogging for HP/Canon print heads.

 

[websnail]

CIS tends to clog or damage HP/Canon print heads when it malfunctions. You can replace HP ink cartridges and get a new print head on the new ink cartridge. But if the CIS is not fixed you will probably need to keep replacing ink cartridges. Your CIS is not feeding sufficient ink to the print head. It is the primary cause of clogging for HP/Canon print heads.

Some of that is somewhat generic and when the HP88 printhead is concerned it seems that they are essentially unrecoverable whereas the Canons tend to be a bit easier to clean up, although not perfect for other reasons.

Also some of the points TinHo has raised aren't necessarily accurate, it could be a number of things so here's my experience on this which extends about a year to 18 months now.


1. Most CIS kits for the HP officejet family (that use the HP10/11 or 88 printheads/cartridges) tend to use a cartridge design that completely side steps a major safety feature built into the cartridge and printer. ie: that rubber bulb on the bottom of the OEM cartridges doubles as a pump bladder (sort of like bellows) and a way of indicating when ink has run out.

The CIS design usually has a hard plastic piece which indicates to the printer that there's still ink in it, even if there isn't. Weird thought it sounds the printer is actually able to detect pressure variances somehow and knows when air is or ink is not present.


2. HP88 printheads and air equals dead printhead... If the printhead is drawing in air bubbles due to a badly primed or empty CIS system the printhead will died pretty quickly... The black is particularly prone to this issue.


3. I've found that the HP88 printheads in particular is not capable of handling environmental conditions that it's supposed to... According to the information available on their site the printheads are all spec'd to around 41'C... I've found that the printheads will exhibit problems with drying ink and clogged heads at around 30'C and sometimes sooner when used in an air conditioned dry environment. 3rd party inks are more susceptible to this but only by a small margin I've been doing some empirical testing and it seems that the HP OEM inks are also prone to this issue.


I'm now in the process of testing to see if dyebase black ink can be used as a replacement and so far, using a semi-dead HP88 printhead I'm finding that it is working better although not ideal due to ink bleed, etc...


I do have my own CIS design which is aimed squarely at school environments for this model and those of other related printers but at present I'm working on resolving this ink issue before I start touting my wares again... It's a pain in the backside.