Cleaning ink cartridge?

Epson cx8400 wont print out new black ink?

• Hi I have an Epson cx8400 printer. I haven't printed anything out from it for about 4 months because all my color ink was low. My black ink was about half full. Recently, I went out and bought 4 new ink cartridges (black, magenta, yellow, blue). I installed the magenta, yellow, and blue ink cartridges and tried to print out a document with black and blue text. The only problem was, the printer only printed out the blue text. I thought the black ink head was clogged or something, so I cleaned it. After cleaning it, i tried again and got the same results. Fed up, I threw away the black in cartridge because I thought it was useless. I installed the new black ink cartridge and tried to print out the document. Once again, the printer only printed out the blue text. I did the cleaning cycles on the printer, and still i get the same results. Ive done the nozzle tests, and the blue, magenta, and yellow come out fine, only no black ink. Can someone help me with my problem? Is there something else I can do? Thanks in advance!

• Answer:

  There isn't much you can do on these printers when this happens. You can go out and try to find a "cleaning" cartridge that is filled with some cleaning solution but the result of those are iffy. Epson printers don't store very well at all. When they go unused for a couple of months the ink dries out and clogs the print nozzles. If it won't clean out the printer is pretty well done. The cleaning cycles have probably already taken half of the ink in the color cartridges already. My suggestion is to just cut your losses and get a new printer. If you leave your printer unused for stretches I would suggest looking at a small black and white laser if you don't need the color. This would be the best way to go as the cartridges use toner that is a dry powder and won't dry out on you. You could store one for a year and it should work fine if you plug it back in. If you do need the color or a scan copy function then I would look at a cheap HP. You will want one that uses two cartridges. A black and a single color like the 61 series cartridge. These have the print head on the cartridge so if it does dry out simply replacing the cartridge fixes the clogged nozzle problem. Wal-mart sells a few of these for $30-$40.