Lexmark blackmark

[Loose rivets]

Hi,

My son has a networked Lexmark X1150, and the black ink printing is affected by horizontal striping to the point of illegibility.

The ink level indicator is showing about 40% but the faintness of the print seems to indicate that it is low.

The odd thing is, that reading through help, one of the statements says that if the printer is stopping every few lines and showing this striping, the fault may lie with the fact that the speed of data to the printer is too fast or slow. It IS hesitating in this way.

It seems very old tech stuff, not to be able to down-load a test page quickly. Test page colour is OK black is not, and a simple Word doc is faulty…I am doing it on the PC that is connected to the printer by the way. (Win XP )

It may of course be that the ink is gone and the level indicator is not working, but I don’t want to shell out for a new cartridge if it still has some life in it. The heads have been cleaned and seem clean.

Anyone have any experience of this? RB

[unclenelli]

Sounds like a clogged head. The software cleaning tool (in the printer options) can only do so much - it only tries pushing more ink through to blast the inkjets clean. The holes are probably solidly blocked and pressure is building behind the inkjets. After the printing has stopped, the in then oozes out slowly through the clot and forms a large droplet on the underside if the head. This slowly dries to a treacle-like consistency and scrapes accros the paper on the next print job.

This usually occurs when the printer gets used infrequently (less than once a week) or if you've been refilling the cartridges.

Lexmark ink is expensive (£40+ for a full set!!!), and the combined scanner is a bonus, but try binning it and changing to another brand of printer and separate scanner.
Try a printer with separate ink tanks (if you run out of magenta - you only replace magenta) These ink tanks normally fit into a removeable print head which makes manual cleaning easier.

[Loose rivets]

Thanks for reply.

Careful inspection of the head shows no sign of build up, but I take the point that it may be pressurizing inside. I used to have some success cleaning the old Inkjets with a cotton bud and ‘serviceol’ but I don’t have much kit while in the US

This one you only have to buy the black, but it’s still a waste of money - if there was something true about this hesitation. This statement came from the Lexmark troubleshooting menu, but for the life of me I cannot see why the two symptoms are related. RB