Burnt/shorted out or blown printheads - L25500 latex printer

I have this problem every once and while. When a printhead will short out and create this little burnt spot on the electrical connections (see photo attached). The printhead will be fine before hand then the printer will ask to replace a printhead and I'll take it out, inspect it, clean the connections and put it back in. Then the printer usually will ask again, I reseat the printhead and it then it works fine, but sometimes it will just get worse until it shorts the printhead and I'll smell this burnt smell from the printhead. Then I know it's done. There goes how many hundreds of dollars. Is this the printer doing this or the printhead? Is there something that can be done in the service menu? This printer is fairly old, but my other printer the z6200 just doesn't do this sort of thing ever and it's pretty old. I hope it's just the printers age and not HP.

#1 Hi, did you get this resolved--the burning of the printhead. I have an L26500 that just did this, however with new and good used replacement printheads it still tells me to "reseat" any replacement printhead. I think that when it burned the printhead that it also burned the carriage pca, but I'm not sure. Maybe it burned the flex contacts out as well. I don't presently know. What was your exact precise problem. Thanks.

pic attached

#3 My blown / burnt / burned printhead on my L26500 did blow or burn out my carriage pca. I replaced the printhead and carriage pca and I am back printing. I will note that I was using a refurbished printhead and 3rd party ink. I have gone back to OEM printheads and ink for my own reasons. The blown printhead was not definitively caused by the refurbished printhead or 3rd party ink but I'm not taking any chances.