Problems refilling HP Officejet J4580 - black prints grey

[lakanook]

I am new to this forum. I really hope you guys can help me.

When I refill the ink in my HP J4580 it seems to print OK, but it only seems to work for 1 or 2 refills.

After that, the black cartridge prints grey, despite doing 3 or 4 or more cleaning cycles.

I complained to HP and they sent me a new printer under warranty (I didn't tell them I was refilling) and the new printer has the same problem as the old, so I know it's not a problem with the printer itself now.

Is there any solution to refill the cartridges more than once before they give up? Can these cartridges be revived? I'm using genuine HP cartridges: HP 901 and HP 901XL. Have tried about 20 cartridges in a few months and seems to be the same problem everytime.

Or has HP gotten really smart and made cartridges purposely of bad quality to discourage refilling? If this printer is designed NOT to be refilled, then I have to change for a new one as I use about 1 print cartridge a week (I'm an author). Any suggestions for a cheap and easily refillable printer?

Thanks!

 

[ghwellsjr]

The best printers for doing easy refills are no longer on the market. They were made by Canon and used the BCI-3eBk pigment black ink cartridge for printing on plain paper and the BCI-6 dye ink cartridges for printing in color on any kind of paper. I would highly recommend an MP780 all-in-one if you can find a used one in your area. If you just want a printer, you could get an iP4000 or even an iP3000, but these are a lot harder to find and tend to be overpriced. Where are you located?

These ink cartridges are transparent and have no electronics in them. You can refill then in a couple minutes using the German refill method and you can easily see when they are full. The printer has no way of knowing that you are refilling.

After Canon took those printers off the market, they put electronic chips in the cartridges and made them non-transparent to discourage refilling and their latest printers are very flimsily made. I do not recommend any of them unless you want to spend a lot of many on ink.

Fortunately for us, a lot of people are now getting rid of these printers because they want wireless or don't care about refilling. If I were you, I would check craigslist in your area, check your local thrift stores, and check on eBay.

However, there is a risk in buying one of these printers sight unseen on eBay and especially having it shipped. You should get the seller to do a nozzle check and include it with the printer. If the seller is claiming a printer in excellent condition, get him to promise a fully functioning print head delivered or refund you $55 because that is how much it will cost you to replace the print head.

You should also get the seller to promise to remove the ink cartridges and do at least two deep cleanings (head refreshings) followed by another nozzle check to verify that nothing prints. This will insure that no residual ink in the print head will contaminate the electronics during shipping and cause permanent damage to the print head and maybe even to the printer. I know from experience that these things can happen.

Good luck and I hope you find a good used MP780 printer.

 

[lakanook]

Thank you ghwellsjr!

I will be on the look out for an MP780. I live in Sydney, Australia, so that reduces the choices. Not every printer model makes it down here.

If anyone has other models to recommend, or a solution to one of the printers I already have, I would be very grateful.
I actually have 4 printers, and none of them seem easy to refill: HP J4580, HP PSC 1500, HP F380 and Epson TX110.

I need an all-in-one printer which has to double-up as a fax machine, easy to refill. Everything else is quite flexible.

Thanks for your help!

 

[ghwellsjr]

Yes, Australia is a place where if you ever find an MP780 printer you should snatch it up, especially if you can perform some more tests on it to verify how good it is. Another user recently asked about the similar MP760 and I gave him a list of tests he could perform. I highly recommend you do these same tests except for the ones on a later post that had to do with scanning film and the card reader since the MP780 doesn't have those capabilities, but you do want to test the automatic sheet feeder.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Are you aware that there are two paper sources on the MP780 and there is a button to switch between the two? The one on the back is called the Auto Sheet Feeder and the one underneath the printer in a tray that you have to pull out is called the Cassette. It was probably set for the Cassette and there was probably no paper in it.

The extended nozzle check always takes paper from the Auto Sheet Feeder on the back even if the setting is for the Cassette. So when you did the extended nozzle checks, it was able to print OK. But then when you did the copy function, it scanned half way through and complained about "paper not loaded". This is the normal behaviour when there is no paper available.

So, if I were you, I would contact the seller and explain the situation and see if you can follow through on your tests and finalize the transaction.

If you don't want to do this but instead want to get your HP going again, you probably should start another thread because this one has taken a side track. Either way, let us know what happens.