Ricoh C751, C901 & Xerox 770

[PrintTriks]

OK I see the empty toner and Developer slots so now you got me interested, What will be the advantages?

[onwsk8r]

I've run both of those machines (well, only 9xx's of Ricoh) plenty, and I prefer the Xerox's quality by a long shot. I was informed today that some of my printing was OBVIOUSLY printed on an offset press by an "expert" designer
Now that Xerox has solved the gloss problem, the machine does a decent job on matte until the coverage gets up in the 200% range and it actually matches gloss levels on glossy pretty well also. I printed some Carolina 10pt C2S about two hours ago (paper set to semi-matte 220-256) and smiled to myself when the glossiness of the ink was pretty identical to that of the paper. I've said to myself several times that it really looks offset-esque. I'm amazed at how amazed I am by the quality of the printing. Oh, also, it has an inline spectoproofer - I tell the machine to calibrate itself and that's the end. Not sure if this comes standard or not.
Ricoh tends to have a tendency to jam unless you're running "approved papers" and our lazy Ricoh techs didn't even try to fix that, whereas Xerox is there saying WTF, mate and running test patterns within the hour. Ricoh also has that toner-not-adhering problem. Xerox does not have this problem. We don't even always wait for the wood to be converted to paper before we print it on the Xerox.

That being said, the difference in quality is not worth the difference in price. If your customers are that picky, you'd best get a Nexpress or an Indigo.
Plus, the Xerox sales people never have my best interests at heart. Unfortunately my current company's decision maker is not perhaps the most qualified to be out in the wild by himself buying equipment. Xerox sold him a Freeflow rip. Our shop is Fiery-driven. Why would they do this? Doubt it has anything to do with Freeflow's licensing fees. Also it has a punch. We have a three-hole drill which we use about once a month. Why do we need a punch? We do s*** loads of coils, but it can't punch 19 holes. Only 2 & 3 holes.

We have a job of 110,000-ish 12x18 impressions coming up that will be printed on 80 text (and it all needs to be coiled - I think I'm about to cook through some vacation days) - I'll keep you all posted on how that goes.

No clue how many impressions we've put on it since we've gotten it, but it's jammed on me like.. twice (true story). Once was from a LCT before the machine was "balanced" and once was because it tried to feed six sheets at once. That's what I call offset quality - no other digi has ever fed six sheets at once for me before

Oh one other thing - Ricoh offered super low click charges. Awesome click charges.
Xerox gave us the big blue shaft. Kicked us right in the X. Again, not sure if that's our decision maker working his magic or whether they just like to stick it to the customers.

Afterthought: I've gotten considerably better registration on the Ricoh than on the Xerox. We had to modify artwork today to make it Xerox 770-friendly. I can't recall ever having bad registration or skewing when I worked at the Ricoh-driven shop.

[mkitzerow]

Since you have now had these 2 units for a year, how are they performing? Is it helpful having to units?

[MailGuru]

"......You can always just manually duplex it. I have customers that do all the time with no issues....."

Ever tried a manual duplex maneuver on 4-up 6 x 9 post cards with personalization on both sides? Don't try it, trust me. IMHO, if it won't auto-duplex WITHIN SPECS at 300 gsm, it wouldn't be of much use in a production shop.
(100# Gloss Cover specs out at 270 to 272 gsm and 11-points on a caliper)

If you've "tricked" your machine into auto-duplexing outside of the specs, you are setting yourself up for disaster.

True scenario - it happens all the time. Customer support: Set your tray settings at 256 gsm, set the profile on the rip for yadda-yadda-yadda. And, eureka! Like magic, it works!

So, based on that, you take on a 10,000 piece job that you have promised your customer that you can produce, only, you can't. Printer keeps jamming every 10 to 20 sheets. Frustration. Long hours (it's gonna take 2 days at this rate), and you feel the need to kill somebody.

So, you call in the service tech to fix machine so it doesn't jam as often, so you can complete job, and live up to your committment to your customer. Service tech examines situation for about 5-minutes, then promptly announces "It's the paper. You're running paper outside the specifications of this machine" - then packs up and leaves.

NOW what are you going to do?

[onwsk8r]

MailGuru: All of those machines are spec'd to duplex 300gsm. The 770 can only duplex 221+ GSM out of an LCT, though.

The 770 has terrible duplexing 99% of the time (without some serious tweaking), so it doesn't really make much difference. Manually duplexing only requires adjusting one side, which is nice, but we rarely do it. Sheets walk over time on long runs, though, so spot checks are more useful than programmable cutters. It will, however, handle nicer papers (eg Mohawk 50/10, Classic Crest, etc) fairly well.

The 9xx rarely had trouble duplexing any of my jobs, and the sheets did not walk over time on long runs. Any issues were resolved with minor tweaking - unapproved papers included.

We have rarely had them, but neither machine ever let us down for 5-figure runs excepting minor maintenance, albeit more frequently on the Xerox. Make sure your Xerox bill is paid before beginning any long runs.

[jricart]

MailGuru: All of those machines are spec'd to duplex 300gsm. The 770 can only duplex 221+ GSM out of an LCT, though.

The 770 has terrible duplexing 99% of the time (without some serious tweaking), so it doesn't really make much difference. Manually duplexing only requires adjusting one side, which is nice, but we rarely do it. Sheets walk over time on long runs, though, so spot checks are more useful than programmable cutters. It will, however, handle nicer papers (eg Mohawk 50/10, Classic Crest, etc) fairly well.

The 9xx rarely had trouble duplexing any of my jobs, and the sheets did not walk over time on long runs. Any issues were resolved with minor tweaking - unapproved papers included.

We have rarely had them, but neither machine ever let us down for 5-figure runs excepting minor maintenance, albeit more frequently on the Xerox. Make sure your Xerox bill is paid before beginning any long runs.

We own 2 Xerox digital presses: 700 and 770. On the 700 you can auto-duplex up to 220gsm, and on the 770 up to 300gsm. We had tweaked some paper profiles and duplex adjustments and we are getting pretty good results duplexing 300gsm on the 770. There is always 1 corner on the back side that its a little distorted, about 1mm, which is not a big deal for us.

The main concern on both machines is the Inboard-Outboard color consistency.

JRT