KM1 Learning Curve

[Impressionist73]

We recently installed the KM1 Accurio and I'm curious of others experience with this machine. It's been sold to be the answer to all our prayers but with a background as a Komori operator and offset printing for 20+ years it's falling short thus far. Obviously the technology is very new still and there's just not a pool of trained operators to select from either. Is there anyone out there having success or even issues wit everyday operation? We are like most printers these days and don't run just one type of stock so we can't just load skids of 12pt C2S and keep rolling. We're a fairly small commercial print shop looking to grow and would love to share with anyone willing. I'm not the press operator but I'm a concerned sales rep.

 

[jwheeler]

Ask your KM sales rep. They should be able to provide you with several other shops that have one so you can talk to their owners/operators. The owners of your business most likely already spoke with and/or visted some of these references as well before making a purchase that big...at least I hope they would have! The KM1 is made by Konica Minolta in partnership with Komori. In fact, Komori sells the same press under a different name and color scheme...called the Impremia IS29. KM has a pretty extensive training program for your operators after it's installed. They want it to be successful because that's their flagship device and they want people saying good things about it out there. If you scroll through their LinkedIn or other social media posts, you'll see them post about each one that is sold. I know they recently posted about Hummel Integrated Marketing getting one. There is also a case study video of Postcard Mania. Lastly, you say you're a small print shop...but the KM-1 is well over $1million, so your shop must be at least a decent size for the owners to afford that. Otherwise, they have some pretty big ideas/plans in motion!

 

[Impressionist73]

Thank you very much for your insight jwheer! I can't get into some of the things you hit on but I can say that we have been very disappointed with the support and finger pointing by KM. We have had very minimal training for such a new piece of equipment and the install was months in the making. The print shop here is owned by a our parent company who has a HUGE partnership with KM so i feel things will iron out eventually but customers as you know don't really give a rip about that. They want their jobs yesterday. lol
Our KM sales rep hasn't been the best source thus far either in helping or being here. We've seen him twice since May. The few references we talked to AFTER the machine was purchased by our corporate office only run 2-4 different stocks for post cards and that's simply not our niche here. We're still learning and I get that but this machine is incredibly sensitive and very high maintenance considering what we were sold. Like any new technology I'm issues will arise and I'm sure we'll get through them but I was hoping to find someone that actually has one we could bounce things off. #makeprintinggreatagain

 

[Jorge Pease]

We have the KM1 for about 9 months now. It's been very very good to us but we have always been digital printers moving from Igens. Our training was pretty decent and support has been ok. They take about a day to show up so when we are down we are down for a couple of days but that doesn't happen very often. Quality is amazing, reliability... we churn through 400K piece jobs without breaking down like the laser machines used to. We have added a bridge to a Rollem slitter so we burst the sheets as they get printed. Since almost everything we do contains variable data, offset is not an option so I think the press, though much slower than offset, is pretty amazing if you have the right type of work for it.

 

[Impressionist73]

What is the type of images you're running? We do a lot of book work here and I have some high end furniture clients who demand quality. We've been struggling with a job this week and last that have had lines and streaks in images, mostly the darker images. We keep getting the run around almost to the point that it's part of the machines "Acceptable Quality" and that just ain't gonna fly in our market. We do some pleasing color work that it's done great but some clients we have had for years demand high end quality. The images are sharp, vibrant and clean but these streaks are not good in some images. The book we're trying to is 195 pages plus cover so not every page has this noticeable streaking. It reminds me of a plate having scratches through screens.

thanks for your feedback though Jorge!