Where do I find the cleaning cycle on my hp 6500 printer

SOURCE: Printer head cleaning

Sometimes a cart doesnt work well because of mal manufacturing. Put in another brandnew black cart and do the cleaning cycle again. Its an advantage to use genuine brother carts! If you dont have any success try this: press menu then start/mono (b/w) then four times arrow up. maintenance should be displayed and the printer beeps. press arrow up til 7 is displayed. press enter. press arrow up til 6 in display. press enter. Display: Cleaning_All. press arrow up til 3 then enter: power_p all. Press start mono. machine starts power cleaning. After maintenance is displayed press arrow up til 0 (zero) then enter then 9 then enter. machine prints print quality sheet. In case there are only a few blocks in black repeat the above procedure. If you doesnt see neither any blocks in bk nor text after the second try be sure that your printhead is clogged and cant be cleaned anymore. This happens due to thirdparty ink which has pigmented ink instead of dye ink. Use only dye ink for brother printers!!!

SOURCE: Brother MFC-5440 Print Head

To remove it you pretty much have to take apart the printer, tip up the lid and try and get the scanner cover verticle and then slide to the left it should detach and then undo all the screws you see on the top were the pinter head is, and i would recommend Alcohol Swabs (IsoPropyl Alcohol), Then just reverse the dissassimbay directions

Thanks Mitch
P.S. Don't forget to rate me
P.S.S. If you follow my directions you do so at your own risk, I am not liable for any damages that occur

SOURCE: MFC-490CW Won't print black

We are going to attempt to do a "power purge" to get rid of any clogged ink nozzles. Note, this will probably eat up about half of your ink, but that is the price you must pay in order to attempt to fix this bad boy.

1) Get into maintenance mode. Press these keys: Menu -> Black Start -> Scan x4 (hit it four times). A number pad should come up. If not, do it again.

2) Hit key 7, then key 6.

3) Press the right key until you get to "CLEANING BLACK."

4) Press 3.

5) Press Black Start.

After it purges and gets back to the main maintenance screen, press keys 9 and 9.

Let your printer start back up. If this does not work, try the above steps up to three times. If it does not work then, you need a new print head, which is not a user-replaceable part on this model.

Good luck.

SOURCE: printer won't print black ink

From multiple online sources, this appears to be a fairly common problem with this model. As a matter of fact, my 490CW is experiencing the same exact issue. Called tech support and they're issuing an exchange. I'd advise that you do the same.