Particular problem with black refill cartridge Epson WF-2860

[pharmacist]

A friend of mine asked me to suggest a good printer with refillable cartridges and I said to him: buy an Epson WF-2860 printer: printer, scanner, fax, duplex printing, refillable cartridges available and user replaceable waste ink tank. Everything fine until I bought him a set of refillable cartridges. I installed the refillable cartridge with Inktec pigment ink (CMYK), which has been previously primed, and after a ink charge the nozzle check was perfect and I also print something to test the quality which was good.

A few days later he complained to me the pages came out almost invisible and indeed: no ink coming from black cartridge. I tried a few cleaning cycles and the nozzle check for black improved but still only about 50% and the other cartridges were ok. I tried to suck ink from the cartridge but sticking a priming syringe into the ink outlet port and ink can be drawn easily without the slightest effort, so the cartridge should function well, but not fast enough obviously causing banding due to insufficient ink supply towards the black nozzles.

In the end I reinstalled the original cartridge and I had to execute 3 cleaning cycle to prime the print head before the nozzle check was perfect: along side with the refillable cartridges for CMY, which happen to be ok and good ink flow.

My question is: what is causing this particular problem with this black cartridge, despite being physically ok (I presume), yet not able to supply ink fast enough to the print head to keep it running 100%. After a few pages the ink supply stops and no or almost no black is coming out from the print head, forcing me to execute cleaning cycles to only restore the nozzle check for less than 50% for the black nozzle row but still not 100%. Everything seems to be physically ok (cartridge, ink).

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You did about all you can do in such case, but you still don't really know what is causing the problem. Is it the ink causing some clogging - you can test that - replace the pigment ink with a dye ink for a short while and see whether you get the same effects. Or there is a mechanical problem with the cartridge, most of them have a spring loaded valve at the ink outlet which gets opened by the ink receptacle in the printhead carriage, and there are mechanical tolerances - you push the cartridge in, it latches in position but it can move back a millimeter or two , and I have seen it a very few times over a longer time that this causes an interruption of the ink flow , pulling some air whatever. Another refill cartridge with another internal construction, apparently slighly different tolerances mechanically fixed that problem. That's all experimental since there is no simple way to identify the possible cause. I had another case similar like that, I swapped the chips between black and magenta and relocated the cartridges which fixed it as well ( about one time only).
If you don't get it working at all you may try as well black 3rd party cartridges which are offered pretty cheap in bulk packs - 10x etc