konica 6500 -xerox 5000

[dencen]

We are a digital print shop doing about 120k color clicks a month.currently we are running 2 docucolor 5000s and a 5252.because of competition we are finding these machines costly to run.we are investigating the konica 6500 which seems to have a significantly lower cost.
Any input on the pros and cons would be appreciated.
Most of our runs are 50-500 clicks,except for journals and booklets which can run as high as 15000 clicks per job.
most commonly run stocks are 10pt,12pt coated 2/s and 80#coated text.
xerox costs about $.17 per click konica is figuring at about $.09


Thanks

[ian]

You need to get hold of your sales rep or his boss to bring down your click charges on the Xerox. Currently they are charging between 7-11 cents per click on the 5000. Tell them that you know a lot of clients that are only paying in that range and you want to re-nogiate a deal and see how it goes. In my experience they have always brought the price down to be competitive.

The 5000 is by far one of the best low cost production machine built. You will not like the minolta once you have a xerox, your clients will complain and go elsewhere.

amin

[barjosh]

Amin is right, just mentioning Konica will make prices fall. There's no doubt that Konica is cheaper to operate because of the consumable pricing. However, it will not handle the same workload as the 5000. The Konica is a quality machine for smaller print runs but it is not a production machine. Think of the Konica as a robust office color copier not as a digital production machine.

[Paul Franks]

I disagree with the other comments about bizhub PRO C6500, while what they said may apply to the older C500/8050, it is not true of the C6500. Do yourself a favor and LOOK at C6500 in person. It's a "big iron' box.

[daisy]

We thought we were buying the right machine with the c6500, but lots of streaking problems. Service can't seem to get rid of them!

[ian]

We have 3 clients who bought the Konica 6500, the machine is always down, they send us work atleast once a week because of it.
The other issue with the Konica is registration, the sheet bounces on heavy stock, the Xerox 5000 has a registration board.

[rcreveli]

I'm new to this board but saw this thread and thought I would resurect it. I have been running the 6500 for about 15 months. Before that I ran a doc 12. At my previous job I ran the 2045, the CLC 1000 and CLC 5000. So ihave some experience with Canon, Xerox and now Konica-Minolta. Our current volume is about 35K Color and about 6K Grayscale. We print Primarly on 100# Coated Cover, 100#Coated Text and 70# Uncoated. We also do a fair bit of C1S. We have the 2 large Paper drawers , and EFI Rip and a standard Finisher. The saddle finisher was overkill for our type of work and we have a large contingent of offline finishing to meet our needs

The Good
The 6500 is the best machine I've run. Even better than the 2045 and I loved that machine.
We can run up to 15Pt C1S but this taxes the machine.
Color Consistency throughout the run is excellent, I confimed this today on a 5000 Click job today (10K 1 original 2 up)
Solids are excellent
The Machine Rarely goes down
Low temp fusing makes bindery go better (Including Laminating)

The Bad
Fine Gradients are much improved over our Doc12 but are not offset quality
Dealer Service is Meh (Switching to KM Corporate)
Requires frequent Calibration. Minimum of 2 day.
Not real happy with the EFI Rip. It's buggy

Overall I think the 5000 is a better machine. KM May argue but I think it is . That being said when we did the numbers for lease and service the 5000 was 2.5X more expensive for the same volume. I don't believe it is 250% Better than the 6500.

When we decided to buy this machine both my boss and I came from Franchises where Xerox and Canon were the only games in town. KM was a huge risk for us. this was a bet your business decision and It is paying off.

[Endlessace]

Well, we bought our C6500 directly from Konica and our service contract is also with Konica. I can say that I'm more than satisfy with their services.

But before we bought the Konica, I did take a look at the Xerox 5000, and I can't disagree that xerox has better quality, not much though, but still better. However, the cost is way beyond the benefit.

[Craig]

When you are talking about the initial sticker price you are correct Xerox is more expensive than Konica or Canon. I could have bought 3 Konica 6500's for what I paid for my DC8000AP, but having gone from a Canon CLC4000 which had service on it at least 3 times a week I decided to stop pinching pennies on the equipment while I'm throwing dollars out the window when the machine is being serviced. I average 1 service call a month on the 8000AP and I have doubled my volume.

When you get the price from Xerox and you finally pick yourself up off the floor (I know it was a shock for me), really look at the big picture, start taking in consideration how much you are loosing to downtime. I ran that CLC4000 as hard as I could and would only average 46K a month, because of it being down for service. My 8000AP is averaging 89K a month and still sits idle 30% of the time. I was going from a PM every 3 weeks and I just had my first one at 320K.

I'm not saying Xerox is the only answer, but if you are expecting to get a production machine, you'll need to pay for it. Cheap is good, but Good isn't Cheap!

[BertThePrinter]

I have been in the color copy business since the days of the original canon CLC 1. We have a KM C500, and it is a piece of junk. We looked at the KM 6500 and the Xerox 5000. The Xerox is about twice the price of the KM 6500. When we looked at the quality differences, and the service behind the machine, we went with the Xerox 5000. The best machine we have ever had. It can run anything! Fantastic quality, great reliability, and service within 4 hours. Our full FSMA service contract is only .049 per copy. You need to get a better price on the service and go with the 5000. Konica will only bring you heartache. At 50,000 plus copies a month, even with the higher lease payments on the Xerox, you will only be paying about a penny a copy more for the much better Xerox. That is sure good insurance in my book. Also, keep in mind, that with Xerox doing the lease, it is much easier to upgrade to a new machine when the volume justifies a faster machine.