C6501 Issues

[GregNac19]

Spoken like a true Xerox authorized agent.

The samples given to us by various dealers after asking them to match up to offset work shows otherwise. No marketing spin for you!

I have sold to the print shop world with this machine on the basis that the press work would decrease and digitial printing would increase. I let the customer bring over 10 jobs to print with the customer's paper. They loved it.
However, I know that quality is 100% subjective. I will say the DC700 is the new sliced bread though.

[gig0]

However, I know that quality is 100% subjective. I will say the DC700 is the new sliced bread though.

If by subjective you mean bias, then you would be correct.

It's gotten to the point where you need a shovel to read through the marketing bullshit here.

[Sharp Dot]

henderd,

drawkward is correct about the registration being better on the 700 (1mm) than the 260 (2-3mm approx).
There are many other improvements worth looking at. Decurlers, Lead edge sensor, low melt toner, skew, perpendicularity, magnification adjustment.

I am a former commercial printer of 14 years, pressman for 3 prior to that. I now sell for Xerox. I recently sold a 700 where we were more expensive but it came down to the fact that the customer felt the quality of our output was considerably better than the KM C6501. I have seen very good output and lousy output from KM samples. But what struck me was the difference in clarity in the fine detail.

Good luck with your decision.

[gig0]

yup, thats believable.

[aqa-man]

Ifelton; I'm interested in what 'other problems' you had with KM6501; we've just bought and rejected one for various quality reasons; we had blade-dislodging problems, banding (with a Creo, strangely), spots in a line... are these associated with the older models, or also with the 6501"e" do you think? Also, what is the Faci/ System 7?? can anyone say please. The image quality of the KM is brilliant though in many other respects... its brighter colour than anything else, very rich deep colour, highly controllable with the Creo, and very flat; registration good as well with correct procedures.

[lfelton]

Ifelton; I'm interested in what 'other problems' you had with KM6501; we've just bought and rejected one for various quality reasons; we had blade-dislodging problems, banding (with a Creo, strangely), spots in a line... are these associated with the older models, or also with the 6501"e" do you think? Also, what is the Faci/ System 7?? can anyone say please. The image quality of the KM is brilliant though in many other respects... its brighter colour than anything else, very rich deep colour, highly controllable with the Creo, and very flat; registration good as well with correct procedures.

I'm not knocking KM as we're pretty happy (now) with the machine, but the problems we haven't been able to fix are:-

- scratching on greeting card stock (240gsm and above), caused by the transport that comes with the high capacity stacker. If you have a KM6501 with the high cap stacker, you can't print greetings cards, full stop.

- RIP bugs, which are not really KM's fault I suppose. They occur very rarely and we can't make it break on demand. Frustrating, but not really a show stopper.

- not really happy with the way that basic level calibration has to be done "by eye" by an engineer when major components are replaced. If done wrong, this can have an impact on colour accuracy and I think there should be a more accurate way to set this.

The blade flips are fixed now, but in truth we got lucky and only had it for a few weeks. We'd had the advanced operator training so were able to fix that ourselves, so an irritation not a biggie (as it was for some people).

Banding is inevitable on every single digital machine on the market today, but RIP options can often help reduce or disguise this. Did your tech trainer go through all this with you? When we were evaluating kit, we found less banding with a 6501 than a X700 or X8000 (one of the reasons we chose it). Difficult to advise you on that one as I don't know what your expectations are, but I can certainly confirm the '01 is no worse than everything else and better than most.

FACI I can help with (cut & paste off of an email from KM)...

FACI Kit:-
GA Premium Edition
Fiery Impose
Fiery Compose
Colour Profiler & Software.

Hope that helps, but bottom line is that if your supplier couldn't get it working properly, you made the right decision in returning the kit.

PS Look on the KM web site for a system 7 spec, basically it's a bundle of the goodies that most print for pay shops need.

[aqa-man]

I think that KM shoot themselves in the foot with their "one size fits all" naming of what is really a wide product range. Printers need a System 7 with FACI etc. or similar. Anything else simply does not cut it and trying to save money on the spec is a false economy.

* You've been sold a machine without the heavy duty paper feed unit (PF602? from memory). Without this you really have no hope of getting good "registration" (I'm assuming you don't literally mean screening registration, but either F-T-B registration or sheet to sheet consistency).

All of the above are fixable & I can assure you that on our 6501 System 7 the registration is extremely good over a wide range of stocks.

@Drawkward, you are wrong about colour and I can only assume that the KM dealer getting you samples was not up to the job. We run both machines in daily production, the Xerox with over a million clicks and the KM with about 400K (we've only had it a couple of months). The KM is just in a completely different league in terms of colour accuracy and consistency. We have several other issues with the KM, but the quality of the print is not one of them!

Ifelton; I'm interested in what 'other problems' you had with KM6501; we've just bought and rejected one for various quality reasons; we had blade-dislodging problems, banding (with a Creo, strangely), spots in a line... are these associated with the older models, or also with the 6501"e" do you think? Also, what is the Faci/ System 7?? can anyone say please. The image quality of the KM is brilliant though in many other respects... its brighter colour than anything else, very rich deep colour, highly controllable with the Creo, and very flat; registration good as well with correct procedures.

[aqa-man]

The blade flips are fixed now, but in truth we got lucky and only had it for a few weeks. We'd had the advanced operator training so were able to fix that ourselves, so an irritation not a biggie (as it was for some people).

Hope that helps, but bottom line is that if your supplier couldn't get it working properly, you made the right decision in returning the kit.

PS Look on the KM web site for a system 7 spec, basically it's a bundle of the goodies that most print for pay shops need.

Thanks for comments; excellent. We have Creo rather than Fiery, and I think banding is sorted now, dont know how... had a 'patch' fitted??
Its the flipping we mainly bothered with; theres a lot of 'fixes' mentioned on the pro tech site... what method did you use? trimming edges? pulling or removing springs? cutting the corners? changing the blades? using 8050 springs? Is it really something you can fix as a user?
(By the way, where u based? I'm in Lakes, UK)

[UberTech]

The blade flipping (IMHO) has been resolved with the DU102C they came out with a B then a modified B now it's C and they seem to be ok now.

The FACI kit is all or none of what was listed. a FACI kit can be one of two things. A dongle to allow you to plug a monitor into the Fiery or a dongle,desk,screen, keyboard etc.

- not really happy with the way that basic level calibration has to be done "by eye" by an engineer when major components are replaced. If done wrong, this can have an impact on colour accuracy and I think there should be a more accurate way to set this.

You mean the offset adjustments? An automatic version of this was programmed in to the machine but you would need the same type of paper they use in the factory to be able to use it. I haven't found this super critical unless you are printing gradients.

[lfelton]

The blade flipping (IMHO) has been resolved with the DU102C they came out with a B then a modified B now it's C and they seem to be ok now.

The FACI kit is all or none of what was listed. a FACI kit can be one of two things. A dongle to allow you to plug a monitor into the Fiery or a dongle,desk,screen, keyboard etc.



You mean the offset adjustments? An automatic version of this was programmed in to the machine but you would need the same type of paper they use in the factory to be able to use it. I haven't found this super critical unless you are printing gradients.

IMO the most important bits are the profiler/spectro and the profiling software. All the other bits are useful though.

@UberTech - no, as mentioned before, I am talking about the gamma adjust. Cutting out little holes in bits of paper and comparing colours. Nasty.

Everyone prints gradients!

@aqa-man - the flipping problem hasn't occurred in a long time for us. Are you using the right drums? If you are not being serviced by KM directly and your supplier is using old drums, they need a swift kicking. I don't operate the machine myself, but the operator told me he could fix the problem after the advanced operator course. That's a moot point now, but my guy did find the course very useful and it has cut down on our call out rate. We're pretty pleased with the '01, especially considering it cost less than the upgrade to our fold, stitch & trim line last year. We're in Gloucestershire BTW.