Black printing blue-ish

[Colin]

SP-540i

I've had a few prints recently where the black won't print properly, printing a cadet blue color instead, then printing black .properly. This time it even printed the registration marks blue (I brightened up the photo a fair bit to show the blue).

What is causing this?

 

[Jim Hancock]

It looks like your black is dropping out. If you do a test print immediately after this occurs, what does it look like. I suspect the black damper is failing. Also check the black cartridge, as they sometimes run out of ink and the empty tab doesn't come out far enough to stop the printer.

 

[Colin]

It turns out that the tab in either the Cyan or Black cartridge had failed to pop out enough to tell the printer that it was empty. Continued printing caused the Cyan or Black line to get filled/contaminated with the other color. I syphoned that line, pulled some ink out, and then did a bunch of pure Cyan & Black printing and it slowly came back to normal.

 

[Gino]

Another happy ending.