Xerox 7556 Life...

[kdw75]

We are in the process of buying a Xerox 7556. We plan to use this for 11x17 heavy coverage variable data work that we do monthly. They quoted us 8 cents per click regardless of coverage on the maximum sheet size making it practical for us.

What is the life expectancy of a machine like this? Xerox is giving us 5 years of service on it. At some point will they consider the machine junk and no longer renew the service agreement? If so how many sheets is a safe bet to figure for the life of the machine?

[Craig]

Well.... you are buying an office copier not meant to handle much more than 20lb bond on a regular basis. If your intent is to run a lot of cover stock through you will NOT be happy in the long run. Your color consistency when painting the sheet will be shoddy at best and unless you have a RIP have fun processing variable data. Also at $0.08 per click you are almost twice the cost as a low volume production machine. See if they can make it work with a 700 series, you will find your lease higher, but your maintenance fees may offset it especially when your volumes grow.

[kdw75]

Hi Craig,

We gave our Xerox guy samples of our files to run, which are solid 11x17 with the type reversed out and bleeds run on 80# Gloss Cover. This was the machine he recommended. We also have a ColorQube 9202, but the quality isn't satisfactory for this client. They tend to have full color pictures and solids with small type reversed out of it.

The agreement is that we buy the machine outright and they provide the service on it for 5 years as well as guarantee 8 cents per click on color and 1 cent on B&W. We have a 7760 with metered ink that costs us $500 for a set and it would still end up costing us more than 15 cents per click for this client.

[arossetti]

A digital box running within its recommended monthly volume will last about 5 years. This is one of the few pieces of equipment I would recommend a FMV lease over buying because of the life expectancy. As Craig said your click rate is high compared to a production machine which you could easily get .05/click. The 7760 might do well in the show room, might do well the first 6 months, hell maybe even a year but I would not recommend running cover weight through it day in and day out.

[kdw75]

While the .05/click would be nice, wouldn't the machine price be way more than the $10K I can get a new 7556 for?

[arossetti]

Depends. What volume would you be doing a month? The real issue is that your trying to print heavy weight stock with heavy coverage on an office printer. If these are images (flesh tones especially) you are going to have a lot of headaches trying to keep the quality satisfactory. Does this go to finishing after print? If so you also need to think about registration and curl which will be another source of headaches. This machine is not meant to do what you are asking of it, don't trust the person trying to sell you the machine.

[kdw75]

Our volume is probably going to be around 10,000 clicks a month. We still have a few 7760s that we use and our Colorqube 9202. This machine will only be doing heavy coverage work that needs to be laser.

Up until now we had been running the shells on the press and then doing imprints. The purpose of this machine is to let us make one pass through the printer and have the job go straight into the box. The paper we use is around 8 thousandths thick and the print samples that xerox gave us are run on 12 pt. We were told this was good for running up to 300gsm paper.

We still go to press for most of our work it is just the variable data work that we are wanting to go digital with.

Oh and there is no finishing. It just cuts down and gets tossed in the mail stream.

[arossetti]

In that case then I agree, the 7760 would be fine. I was thinking of volumes around 50k. At the end of 5 years you will have under half a million clicks on it so you might be able to stretch the life past the 5 years I stated earlier.

[kdw75]

We are buying the 7556. The 7760 are what we already have.

[arossetti]

Sorry that is what I meant.