I have tried getting the printer to recalibrate color, and it is able to print a real black. The really strange thing of it is, once we have saved these illustrator files as jpegs (with a black #00000 number), when we open them in Gimp the black has changed. Yet if we put black type on there, the black type will print black, but the black background will not.
We’re not testing anything new or unusual with the printer or ink, we’ve been using it all along. I think there’s something getting changed mid-program-change, but I can’t figure where it’s happening. The reason I tried that cyan coloring was because of a suggestion online, and it was the only one that ‘changed’ to the new program with a #000000 coloring, yet still printed in dark brown.