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HP OfficeJet 250 printer

I'm really struggling with something and could use some advice if anyone has the time. I must admit I have posted this on a couple of forums today, as I have a works presentation tomorrow and my printing headaches are stressing me out. 

My two issues are

1. I am getting a degree of smudging, not every time, about 50% of the time. Always in the same two places with it happens. I am printing MS Word documents in landscape mode. The documents are just one A4 page in length (but I am printing on both sides), and include a mixture of Size 12 to 24 Font, and some colour JPEG pictures. I've used the in-built Cartridge Cleaner, Alignment, and Clean Smear and am not showing an good returns from doing these maintenance tasks. I've tried a printer reset as well. I've also been through about x2 and x5 colour cartridges over the past week, brand new, real HP62 cartridges, and i have the same problem each time. I've probably spent £200 on cartridges. The smudges are fairly faint, but are obvious to the naked eye, and this is a professional document I am trying to print, and I can't really afford smudges of any kind. I've tried to clean the rollers but it's not that easy due to the design of the printer. I also read something yesterday about ink jet printers having some of kind of wasted ink reservoir, and mine was soaked through with blank ink, but not colour. I did my best to clean that, but has not helped. There was a guy on YouTube who said that sometimes when cartridges link they saturate the ink waste mechanism in the printer. Is the smudging likely to be aggravated because I am printing J-Peg pictures (they are small by the way. Each A4 has about 3 or 4 JPEG pictures on it (colour), and each J-Peg picture is only about 10% of the entire available space on A4).   Interestingly, I think I am noticing less smudging when I print in MAX DPI ENABLED. Any reason, why this might be so?

2. I think this is unrelated to the smudge, not sure? no matter how I do it, I just cannot refill my HP62 cartridges and it works. With the above on smudging by the way, that's with the original "new" ink on the HP62 cartridges.  With this issue I am some other HP cartridges for a bigger printer which I know longer have. These Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow cartridges are brand new, and quite large, I think about 25ml of ink in each one I am guessing. I think my HP62 only holds about 4ml of ink, or 4.5ml for tricolour cartridges (non XL), I think. I follow all the advice on the video's. I am a nurse so I have my own syringes. What I don't have is a way of priming the refilled cartridge, but I read that as long as I am patient I don't need the priming mechanism? I add the three colours to the expended HP62 Tri Colour cartridge, and even if I leave it alone for more than 12 hours, all I get is faint colour with lines through it, every time, even with a lot of printer maintenance (clean cartridges and alignment). I must have tried this 10 times in recent weeks. 

This is all driving me crazy. 

Comments

  • I don't know the answer to your question but would like to comment on your guestimation of ink capacity I can't remember the exact amounts HP put in but the standard yield black is around 6ml and the standard colour 2.5ml per colour the XL being around 17ml black and 4ml for each colour, compatible XL cartridges tend to be 20ml for the black and 5ml per colour, if you want to know why the standard cartridges hold so little ink just remove the top and all will be revealed.
    I hate football and do wish people wouldn't keep talking about it like it's the most important thing in the world
  • robert1212
    robert1212 Posts: 13 Forumite
    First Post
    I don't know the answer to your question but would like to comment on your guestimation of ink capacity I can't remember the exact amounts HP put in but the standard yield black is around 6ml and the standard colour 2.5ml per colour the XL being around 17ml black and 4ml for each colour, compatible XL cartridges tend to be 20ml for the black and 5ml per colour, if you want to know why the standard cartridges hold so little ink just remove the top and all will be revealed.
    Yes, I've seen pictures! I think I must be paying £1 for every tiny drop of ink. Only just found about about HP Instant Ink.

    Out of interest, how easy is it to remove the top of a small cartridge like the HP62 ?
  • I don't know the answer to your question but would like to comment on your guestimation of ink capacity I can't remember the exact amounts HP put in but the standard yield black is around 6ml and the standard colour 2.5ml per colour the XL being around 17ml black and 4ml for each colour, compatible XL cartridges tend to be 20ml for the black and 5ml per colour, if you want to know why the standard cartridges hold so little ink just remove the top and all will be revealed.
    Yes, I've seen pictures! I think I must be paying £1 for every tiny drop of ink. Only just found about about HP Instant Ink.

    Out of interest, how easy is it to remove the top of a small cartridge like the HP62 ?
    It is reasonably easy to remove the top of these cartridges, a wide chisel positioned at the join between the  top and bottom and a quick, sharp impact will break the glue, however the only reason for doing this would be curiosity 
    I hate football and do wish people wouldn't keep talking about it like it's the most important thing in the world
  • robert1212
    robert1212 Posts: 13 Forumite
    First Post

    Hi all,

    A small update here. I do not seem to get any smudging if I set it to "Max DPI enabled", but anything other than this, means smudging. Any idea why this is so? 

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