Printer won't print in black

Greyscale is color not black only.
You can print in black and it will look grayscale only darker, printers are a pain to work with after a year has gone by, I can expect almost a half hour to print something with my $400 epson because one of the colors is out even though I never printed in the last year a colored page. I take the color cartirges out and they are empty, but I only print a page 2-3 times a year. I use the scanner all the time. Brother and epson have their print heads in the printer not the cartridge so make sure your inks are always have something in it or it will be miricle for the printer to last more than a year. Check colors every other week. One Epson printer only lasted 3 months because I never used it(print head dried up). Never use the set up with tubes running outside printer to small tanks of ink if you only use it occationally.

this work for me with a mfc 255cw. why it works I don't know but I will continue to use this setting. thank you

Silly question from my side: have you removed the tape covering the nozzles of the cartridges? Is it original Brother cartridges, or is it compatibles?

here's a solution i came across when dealing with the same problem. apparently the printer expects all of the cartridges to be full and has a sensor to make sure they are even when only printing black. hope this helps!

http://journal.drfaulken.com/trick-your-brother-inkjet-into-working-when-an-ink-cartridge-runs-dry/

I have a brother MFC 3240C. My Black ink stopped printing(initially printed horizontal faded lines and gradually got worse), the other colors were printing fine. I tried cleaning numerous time( 50 -100 times over 1-2 weeks ). Still no improvement. The way I print now is:
1. I go to Printer Properties
2. Change Media type from "Plain Paper" to "Inkjet Paper".
3. Change Quality to "Photo".

This takes a long time to print 1-2 minutes per page. However, this works for me since this is my Home printer and use it for printing only few pages here are there.

Good Luck
RK

Replace the printhead !

the black ink that was used in the refilled cartridges was probably to thick for the nozzels on the head, you can try buying the original cartridges and then cleaning again, or check with the store you got these cartridges from as some of them offer a warranty

Check your ink cartridge if they are properly installed.

Check your print settings.

Make sure your ink cartridge are not empty.

Replace your ink with the original Brother ink cartridge.

you need to do a hard reset on the printer as well it might clear up the problem and recognize the ink at its proper levels.

refer to your user manual or let us know and we will find the procedure to do so.

i have a similar model and know how picky they can be.

Use another new genuine (original brother) BK cart. Do the cleaning twice only for BK. Wait some time (4 hours). If the ink has dryed up, the cleaning ink will break up the dryed one. Do the cleaning again. If it doesnt work, please write again.