Dulpexing: Auto vs. Manual Pro's and Con's

[tbone56]

An issue has come up for me that weighs heavily on what equipment I need to purchase.

I focus my business on business cards and want to start printing on 100lb cover. However, the machines that auto duplex that weight are much more powerful that I need.

Specifically the imagerunner 9065 vs image press 6000

I print about 5k sheets a week that are all duplexed full color business cards. There are several different styles, colors and so forth.

Is is worth the time saved to get the 6000 with duplexing or better to manually do it on the 9065?

At what point would it justify jumping up to a press 6000?

Can anyone help me with the pros and cons?

[Possumgal]

I have no experience with imagerunners, but I can tell you that you can kiss your front-to-back registration goodbye if you duplex manually. And that would make cutting business cards a real pain.

[hondarr9]

I have no experience with imagerunners, but I can tell you that you can kiss your front-to-back registration goodbye if you duplex manually. And that would make cutting business cards a real pain.

I find just the opposite on our Xerox and KM machines. I get better front to back registration when doing separate runs for heavy card stock.

[JayDA]

I find just the opposite on our Xerox and KM machines. I get better front to back registration when doing separate runs for heavy card stock.

^^ What he said ^^

[jotterpinky]

What I've decided after running both types of machines is that you will get much better front to back registration on the higher end machines...not necessarily because they auto-duplex but because they are designed with tighter tolerances in mind. However, unless you are running prints that have variable information on them i.e. each sheet is different, you should not have trouble manually duplexing. I find the auto-duplex most useful when running postcards or something with an address or variable image where the front HAS to match the back, if you run these on a manual duplex machine you need to constantly check to make sure you have not pulled two sheets, jammed a sheet on the second side, etc.. If you do your entire order is screwed up and you'll need to figure out where you're at...not worth the trouble. If you are running sets of cards this shouldn't be a problem.

You might want to re-think your decision on the Canon 9065. We have one and it's a dog. After one year of use we bought something else and it's collecting dust in the corner even though we still are paying on the lease. The registration seems to hold for a while then drifts off as much as 1/4", then back in several sheets later. You could be running 500 sheets and pull sheet 25 to check, it looks good so you continue printing, when you pull sheet 150 to check it it's also okay. What you don't realize is that sheets 85-118 are out of register with the rest of the sheets in the stack. Our dealer lost quite a bit of money on it replacing parts like crazy to no avail. It could be our dealer though.

[msaeger]

If you are critical about registration get something that will correct registration front to back and lead to trail. Office type machines only correct for lead to trail so your front to back will vary a lot depending on how the paper gets put in the trays.

Machines from Ricoh that do this are the c900, c720, c901, c751, and c651. I know the KM8000 does not sure that you have to get from Canon or Xerox.

[tbone56]

Sorry to reply so late. My spam caught all the email notifications.

So, my take is that is that the hight machines preformance justifies the cost, while the lesser machines cost is more what I can do, the preformance is not worth the extra labor and hard ache.

I haver been quoted on the Xerox 700, Canon IP C9065 but then found out that they only duplex 80lb cover. This is my problem becuase I only want to run 100lb cover for business cards that will have VD.

So, I have asked for quotes on machines that will auto-duplex 100lb and have recieved one on the Canon ImagePress 6010. Waiting on what Xerox has to offer.

If I am only running 100lb cover, I should go with a "press" quality machine? Becuase the registration on 13x19 cover will be better, quality will be better, and the capability to auto-duplex 100lb cover.

Thanks in advance.

[airyk]

We're able to "lie" to our Xerox when duplexing 100# Cover and choose a lower GSM to successfully duplex. However anything higher we manulally duplex.

[arossetti]

They will come back to you with an 8002 or an 800. Might be able to get a good deal on the 8002 but both of those machines seem like a lot for 20m sheets. Whats your total monthly color volume?

[RKS]

We duplex upto 111# Cover in auto on our 700 very successfully. I believe you only have to fool it above 100#.