This is the way. I have a decade+ old HP OfficeJet that I more or less inherited, and it has pigment black ink but dye color inks. When the colors are fine but the black is not, it’s because the black (pigment) cartridge is blocked again. It does this with both HP and third party blacks, though, so it’s definitely pigment vs. dye thing. Easy enough to clean with isopropyl, as you said.
But just to be clear, when we bought new earlier this year, it sure as hell wasn’t HP. I’ll ride that old OfficeJet and my 20+ year old LaserJet until they die, there’s no chipping of cartridges and I’m quite good at printer repair as long as parts are available and it’s not too complex, but otherwise I’m done with HP.
Funny enough, that was the last model I had to do that to, a 9000 series. We had several, but they are dying off steadily to print head failure errors. Reminds me of the Whack-a-Mole scandal.
I would 100% buy a used enterprise printer if I could get a proper deal on it, but that is because I have been a certified HP printer tech and have fixed hundreds of printers. If you count receipt printers and other brands of office printer, I have probably touched over a thousand for anything from rebuilds to jams. There was a year when I rebuilt 10-20 printers a week as part of a schedule.
Anyhow, what I’m getting at isn’t that they are better built or anything like that. There just happens to be enough third party vendors that you never have to pay them a cent to keep a printer running. Someone else already paid them the 2-6k for the printer, and it’s e-waste if it goes into the dump. I can ship of Thesius it indefinitely, even if I have to buy parts from God knows where.
This is the way. I have a decade+ old HP OfficeJet that I more or less inherited, and it has pigment black ink but dye color inks. When the colors are fine but the black is not, it’s because the black (pigment) cartridge is blocked again. It does this with both HP and third party blacks, though, so it’s definitely pigment vs. dye thing. Easy enough to clean with isopropyl, as you said.
But just to be clear, when we bought new earlier this year, it sure as hell wasn’t HP. I’ll ride that old OfficeJet and my 20+ year old LaserJet until they die, there’s no chipping of cartridges and I’m quite good at printer repair as long as parts are available and it’s not too complex, but otherwise I’m done with HP.
Funny enough, that was the last model I had to do that to, a 9000 series. We had several, but they are dying off steadily to print head failure errors. Reminds me of the Whack-a-Mole scandal.
I would 100% buy a used enterprise printer if I could get a proper deal on it, but that is because I have been a certified HP printer tech and have fixed hundreds of printers. If you count receipt printers and other brands of office printer, I have probably touched over a thousand for anything from rebuilds to jams. There was a year when I rebuilt 10-20 printers a week as part of a schedule.
Anyhow, what I’m getting at isn’t that they are better built or anything like that. There just happens to be enough third party vendors that you never have to pay them a cent to keep a printer running. Someone else already paid them the 2-6k for the printer, and it’s e-waste if it goes into the dump. I can ship of Thesius it indefinitely, even if I have to buy parts from God knows where.