Mach 5 envelope printer

[Shane_A]

Anyone with one of these who could pass along some tips it would be greatly appreciated. I can't keep it the printheads clear (dropout on colors), seems like I could more accurately draw anything with reds by crayon that it can print. Anyone having luck with one of these? Seems like a pretty mixed-bag out there at the moment.

*edit: I'm well over 80k on this thing, but it seems like I spend more time in front of it during operation than I do my drill. I'm more trusting of my one-year old with a bag of knives to play with than this thing.

[damfino]

I tested one and gave up pretty quickly - not ready for prime time. Colors were all over the place and you will never get a real Red out of it. Head kept plugging too. The fact that I had to reposition all my files was a pain as well.

Feeder was the worst ever - constant jams. My cost analysis showed that it was actually more expensive to run than my Okidata.

Here's the interesting thing: I was able to purchase one of the desktop incarnations of the MemJet from Europe for experimentation. Head plugging and colors are better on this one, but it can't run envelopes. Go figure...

[Shane_A]

Sounds about where I'm at. There's just so few of them out there to get decent tips/feedback on still, feel like a guinea pig on this. It has its moments, but trying to recreate those moments is like splitting an arrow for the sheriff...

[TheDeputy]

Hi All,

My boss had the sales rep in this morning to talk about this machine. I asked the sales rep about blocked print heads and he hadn't heard of any problems! Is he lying to me????

We are looking for a VDP for envelopes. We get some customers that prefer to not use window face envelopes (invitations and stuff).

Most of the time we only need to be printing in black but the price of a colour option is very close to the black only option and allows us to offer the customer more.

Can anyone recommend a similar machine that is reliable and proven its self that I could check out.

Cheers,
TheDeputy

[TheProcessIStheproduct]

just got a sample in the mail and it had 40-50 white gaps from clogged print head, I was surprised they let that sample out the door. I think everyone wants this technology to work, but memjet needs to turn the corner on the clogging, then I am sure someone with more color expertise could get the colors right. The mach5 guys are more into addressing text and barcodes so they may not be able to improve on the software very much. Also, on shuttle inkjet printers you have a stationary wiper the the print head comes to, with a fixed head you cannot do that so this may lead to the clogging as well.

[Shane_A]

Color management is in the "throw at wall : what sticks?" category. Generate PDF, print one, go back to ID/AI, modify colors with your best guess, repeat until successful or you just want to give up and get the job out the door. And then there's the random need to rotate different sized envelopes in different orientations for output...

I just thoroughly cleaned the printer in anticipation of running our company Xmas envelopes, ran ten successfully to check output. Remaining have varying degrees/positions/colors of dropout, very festive indeed!

Signed,

At a loss and these need to get out the door today

[kevneto]

We have two of them. One has been in production for about 6 months.

No color adjustment, interface stinks,lose image quality within printing of 200 envelopes, black smudges and various other problems. My operator is pretty knowledgeable working this machine and it causes him to pull out what little hair he has! A job last week of 388 envelopes took hours because of constant cleaning, quality issues and software acting up. Wrote a scathing email to our service provider(they are not local...long story) and told them it's basically a "boat anchor". Not a production machine, folks.

So they are coming up 1st week in January to go through it. We'll see.

My boss got these machines without any input from me. I just have to be tormented by the piece of crap.

Would not recommend. Just my two cents.

[PrintTriks]

We have one but have not had as much problems as the rest of you seem to have. Our biggest problem was the build up of excess ink in the cleaning unit, after 4 fixes they seem to finally have it really fixed. I have very little trouble with clogged heads, I do make sure to run something on it every day just to help prevent that problem. Color consistency through out job runs has been fine as well, all though I admit my longest run has been 8000 of the same piece. Which bring up 2 problems I do have, first what production machine has a max run of 999?, Way to low for production work. Second, the color holding has not been an issue but getting the correct color is a complete guessing game, contrary to what I have seen posted you can get a nice red out of it, mind you it took @ two weeks and I have very little hair left.

[Shane_A]

Apparently there is an "envelope kit" for the envelope printer. It's a small baffle that attaches just before the print head and pushes an envelope down and away from it as it passes through. Got it shipped overnight, so far-so good. Trying something with a little more coverage after I finish this run of return-address only.

As for the 999 problem, push the up key on the keyboard. Voila!

[Shane_A]

Tip for black smudges/overspray: print everything with the print setting for some kind of glossy stock. Uses less ink = less overspray = less customers saying, "What are those black smudges on my envelopes?"

And make sure to clean the wiper wheel on Fridays, leave it sit for the weekend.