Epson photo 995 - black ink not printing

Purging Procedure - If you have just installed a new archival or Quadtone cartridge you must purge the Epson print head of all of the old, non-archival, ink before you can begin to print with the full archival effect. The print heads in the Epson 200/400/440/500/600/640/740/800/850/860/900/1160/1520/Photo/Photo 700/Photo EX/Photo 750/Photo 1200 printers hold about 3 to 5 pages worth of ink. Always run a Nozzle check before printing. Even if you get a perfect nozzle check on your first try after putting in a new cartridge, run at least one or two head cleaning cycles. This will prevent any excess ink from over filling the print head. After the cleaning cycles, use the purging test patterns below to purge your system of the old ink. After printing about 5 (8.5x11) pages of this pattern, 98% of the old ink will be gone. The rest will come out slowly and may take as many as 20 or more pages, but at the 98% point you will see good results. If you have an Epson 3000, 5000 or 9000. See below

It's quite likely that at some point in time you will have attempted to print in black only to receive an error message that you cannot print until a colour cartridge is replaced.
"If ink is not in the tubes from the head to the cartridge, air will be sucked in and therefore cause damage to the print head. This is because the nozzles are in the print head and not in the cartridge. "
What Epson are basically saying is... if this safeguard was not in place, and you sent a print request for black when a colour cartridge was empty, there is a risk of air being pulled into the printhead. This air will ruin the vacuum effect needed for the printhead to pull ink in, meaning your printhead would be at risk of never printing again.
Additionally, if any air is allowed go get into the aformentioned tubes from the head to the cartridge, any remaining ink will coagulate. Just in case you're not a scientist - coagulation in a tube/cartridge is bad, and will lead to you not being able to print again with that cartridge, or to a blocked nozzle/printhead which will require a significant amount of cleaning cycles to budge.

if saying color is missing will more than likely have to put in a new or partialy used cartridge for that color - you could try and run any options you may have for cleaning heads/nozzle checks and printing reports to see quality of the printing

There is nothing wrong with the black ink. Just run the head cleaning for better printing.

1. Go to printer and faxes
2. Right click your printer ( Epson Stylus Multifunction Printer/ Copier/ Scanner InkJet)
3. Click printing preferences
4. Click Maintenance Tab
5. Click Head Cleaning
6. Run head cleaning for 5 times then try printing.

Many printers especially Photo ones also use colour even when printing Black. so you do need to replace the spent colour cartridge.

If you only need to print in black get a B&W printer not a colour one.

replace another black cartridge the cartridge is factory defect

Most likely the printer has been sitting for along time not used or you have used cheap replacement ink. Epsons are notorious for clogging the jets with cheap ink. unfortunately replacing the ink cartridges will not help because the jets are seperate from them. If cleaning numerous times does not work your next best bet is to buy a cleaning ink cartridge for your model. otherwise youll need a new printhead or new printer. If your going to use cheap replacement cartridges stay away from epson.

Hi, this is not a solution because I don't think there is one apart from buying new inks. Epson and all other inkjet printers do this to prevent the coloured print head nozzles from getting blocked. If they are not used for a long time the ink dries up and blocks the nozzles. Epson recommends printing at least once a month with all colours to prevent this. Printing in black only option will only work if the colored inks are OK. Whenever the printer is turned on it performs a head clean, this is why the coloured inks get used over time even though they are not used for printing.

Epson ink jet printers require all of the ink cartridges to have ink in them in order to print any color, black and white, or grayscale images. Epson printers contain a permanent print head that needs to be charged with all colors to work. Even when users are printing black text only, a small amount of color ink is used to keep the print head charged for color printing and prevent air bubbles from entering the color print nozzles which can damage the print head. Therefore, once one of the cartridges are expended, the printer signals you to replace the cartridge in order for printing to continue.

Hi , try to clean head until the black color will complete visible .clean also the ink retainer or tank replace with clean absorbent.