Re: Has anyone had any experience with the Xante ILUMINA
I was considering it for my previous job. Comparing Xanté Illumina and OKI C9660n. (later on i got a carte-blanche that allowed me to go for Xerox DC250).
Actually both Illumina and C9660 are the same printer, but Xanté gets the c9660 machine and upgrades it a bit to deal with heavier stock. I´m not confident, however of the quality output of nny of them. From the test i´ve run, with a fresh-installed Illumina, there were several little glitches, mostly with color registration (yeah..indeed. very weird!) if you ran the heavier stock it supposedly allows you to run. also, the consumables cost is quite high (i´ll try to find the spreadsheet with that comparison as i get back home) when put side-by-side with some higher-end printers/copiers such as Xerox DC250 and Canon ImagePRESS C1 (which are way more expensive than Illumina, and thus maybe outside your budget).
Another thing i think i should point is that the machine is not a very robust-one, and started giving all kinds of error messages after a few hours working in the tests i´ve run. The technician that took me to testing did not manage to correct those also (but then, around here not many people is properly trained for that kind of job. he was mostly a almost-tech-savvy vendor)
Re: Has anyone had any experience with the Xante ILUMINA
We have one here. Mixed feelings. When all goes well, the prints are great, but it is very picky about paper quality (especially humidity of the paper). Regarding the heavy paper... Sometimes it works, sometimes it won't. Not suitable as a real production machine in my opinion.
As far as supplies... Xanté supplies are almost twice the price of the OKI 9600 supplies (At least here in Europe). You can use OKI 9600 drums, transfer belt and toner waste cassette without any problems. The toner cartridges are a problem... They probably have a chip in them, and the Xante will refuse to print with an OKI toner cartridge loaded.
Re: Has anyone had any experience with the Xante ILUMINA
We did not purchase the Ilumina as a production machine. We just needed some machine to compliment our traditional presses. With the Ilumina we'll be able to give the our client one hundred or so of their job quickly while the main portion is printed on the GTO. Currently I send out short run digital jobs, but sometimes those jobs become burdensome. Now we'll have the ability to quickly satisfy our client's needs without inconvenience to ourselves. The added bonuses are, if digital output becomes a profit center we're not stuck with a long time expensive lease and we can get the equipment to better handle greater workloads and if digital color does not take off, the Xante Ilumina will pay for it self with one job a week.
Re: Has anyone had any experience with the Xante ILUMINA
We are in the exact same situation. We were just wanting to eliminate the need to job out those very short digital runs. Maybe 2-3 jobs a week for us.
We looked into the Illumina, due to it low equipment price. But after talking to an actual Illumina user, we soon realized that the toner cost would be far more expensive than other options.
We ended up going with factory refurbished Doc-12, that was around the same price as the Illumina, only now we get a Xerox maintenence agreement that includes all consumables for 8.9 cents per color sheet. Our average per sheet cost with the Illumina would have been much more than that. Yes, the Doc-12 is much slower than the llumina, but it comes with an actual RIP, it is extremely reliable, and we don't have to worry about supplies or service, as it is all covered with the click charge. The speed of the doc-12 isn't really an issue for us, since we're only doing a few jobs a week on it anyways.
Re: Has anyone had any experience with the Xante ILUMINA
Yes, after the fact I realized that there are alternatives to the Ilumina.
However, when I purchased the machine my thoughts were not just to do the occasional small run that I jobbed out, but rather to offer new products as well. You see bgrubb7, the Ilumina will print on 24 pt stock and I have a couple of clients that design wedding invitations and were looking for a short run color alternative to a printing press that will print on thick stocks so popular for wedding invitations. I also will be advertising it as a "Digital Color Press" with empathize on the Press part; it would had been difficult to advertise a Xerox or Cannon machine as a press--most clients associate Xerox and Canon with lower quality images as compared to offset. Clients that have compared a Xerox output with an Ilumina one seem to like the Ilumima better. I will be able to sell each sheet for more per print than other toner based devices and I intend on doing so.
Finally, if this machine takes off, I will get quicker more efficient machines.
Fatboysmart , I already sold a job last week for over $600, twice the lease price of the Ilumina.
Re: Has anyone had any experience with the Xante ILUMINA
hi
To print out a good photo you need a good printer and photo paper which it do not come cheap. i recommend you to use either HP1000/1100 printer for best printing, or you can use Epson Printer also. these two printers are best in printing. but then don't go for a cheap or useless photo paper. I also suggest you to go for a quality photo paper. And as far as photo papers are concerned you can opt for samples from freephotopaper .com. I just tried the photo paper *_ [SAMPLES|http://www.freephotopaper.com/sample-offerp.htm] _* I got, And I have to say the prints were beautiful on both the gloss and satin.
A free course on digital photo printing also comes with the samples.
Re: Has anyone had any experience with the Xante ILUMINA
hi,
thanks beaty for suggestion. i have made an order for these free samples.
regarding photo paper, i always opt for a high quality [photo paper|http://www.freephotopaper.com/sample-offerf.htm] , because we can get quality print only when photo papers are good.
Has anyone had any experience with the Xante ILUMINA
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