HP Designjet 500 story continues

The town where I live has a "Transfer Station" where you have to drop off your trash. It also has a Swap Shed where people put items that might have other uses. Old laser & inkjet printers are pretty common there, though the the inkjet ones are typically not worth fixing. This weekend I did find a HP JetDirect 600 card (stuck in an old HP laser printer) which I hoped would bring network connectivity to my big DesignJet 500.

I inserted the card into the 500, and it was recognized. However, when I tried to configure the card from the 500 front panel, it locked the printer up. I tried to reset the JetDirect card, but that didn't help. Not clear where the problem is, but I'm still on the lookout for another JetDirect card!

As a side note, I tried to find the firmware upgrades for the DesignJet 500, and HP's website is a total shambles. You can find pages that explain how to do the upgrade, and they point you somewhere else to get the download. However, those links don't actually work as another part of the website as been restructured.

Last night, I received the print heads that I had ordered. I put them in, and the printer went through the printhead alignment process -- printing much better than before. It took four cycles before the printer was happy. Color calibration was quick. The printheads that I bought were refurbished -- three of the four had already gone past their rated lifetime. Anyway, they were cheap.

Finally, I tried to print some pages, and I have to say that the quality is not very good -- it is unclear whether this is the fault of the rasterizer that is on OSX, or something else. I had to connect my MacBook to the printer with a USB cable, and then download a lot of HP software to make it work.

Anyway, now I just have to connect it to the network and try and convince the kids not to print posters!

Bringing a HP Designjet 500 back to life

I recently acquired an old HP Designjet 500 printer -- the 24inch version. I suspect that it had not been used much as the ink cartridges were full (although expired 10 years ago) and the printheads had less than 5cc of ink through them.

First, I replaced the ink cartridges with new ones (not HP). Compatible ones are dirt cheap on eBay. With new ink, I turned the printer on again, hoping for good news.

The carriage belt began to spit out little bits of decaying rubber, so another trip to eBay to get a replacement belt. This takes time to ship from China.

Replacing the carriage belt involves taking most of the printer to pieces. Nearly all the screws have T15 Torx heads. Except 1. This is either a T9 or a T8 depending on where you looked. My local Ace hardware doesn't stock anything smaller than a T10. Lowes' website is completely useless and has no search results for Torx T9. Home Depot's is not much better, but eventually reveals that they have them.

At this point, life intervenes and I realize that I'm not going to get to HD any time soon. So I resort to Amazon -- where their search engine reveals that somebody sells the Home Depot own branded kits which include T5, T6, T7, T8, T9 and T10. This makes me go and look in my pile of small tools. I find an unopened kit from Lowes which includes about 25 different small bits -- including the T9.

With the T9 in hand, I can finish the disassembly. Reassembly was simple -- until I found a piece of plastic left over at the end! I managed to fit it back in....

The moment of truth -- the printer powers up, runs the self-test. When I try and align the printheads, it fails after printing a very weak test pattern.

Now I've ordered a set of four printheads (from Hong Kong) and I'll see if everything starts to work when they arrive.