Want to upgrade from Xerox Versant 180, recommendations please

wonderings said:

Had a virtual demo of the new Profisio, or whatever the name is now. Pretty much all standard stuff I expected, what I was surprised about was their offer to train our operators to do as much maintenance as possible. This is a huge in my opinion, the more we can do ourselves the more uptime we have. Konica was not willing to do that so we rely heavily on techs which leads to a fair bit of down time. Canon offers this in the US I believe and think this would be a wise move for any of the big players, train the operators who generally get to know the press as good or sometimes better then the techs themselves.

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"Canon" would only train us if we paid to go to their training center in (I think it was) Newark NJ... We learned instead from our Techs.

I feel that I'm the last of the "Maintenance Operators"... I've been told by multiple techs that none of their clients come close to the level that I maintain equipment. Back when I started in the Photo Finishing industry, I was manufacturer trained on how to repair/maintain Noritsu photo finishing equipment... it was expected of us as operators to be able to keep those $250k beasts running. 4 years in and it took someone physically breaking something on the machine for it to (technically) be beyond normal repairs, and even then I fixed it with a drill bit, roll pin, and epoxy. The part was a 8-week backorder from Japan... I was told about 10 years later that my repair was still working.

Now, I see "operators" that I want to hide any and all tools from... no one grasps simple things like "how a screw driver works", it's kind of flabbergasting.

We're going through the same process at the minute (V180 user currently).

So far Xerox Proficio is coming out the most expensive, then Fuji next with Ricoh Pro C5410s coming in cheapest per quarter to run. Not huge differences between them - a few hundred per quarter but every penny counts for a small business!

I've never used Ricoh and the comment on previous page about Fiery integration raises some questions - what issues are there? Surely you just send files to the hold queue and use Command Workstation as I do with my V180?

Xerox and Fuji are in a 'they're rubbish, no they're rubbish' tit-for-tat at the minute!

Main difference is Xerox are quoting on external RIP - Fuji and Ricoh for bundled. I'm not a power user (just a high street copy shop knocking out leaflets, business cards and booklets mainly). And I don't have any colour critical clients. They are all quoting for Fiery Impose though which I find invaluable.

We currently have an external EX 180 - but this is nearly seven years old now, so thinking a new bundled will be better than this anyway??

@Eclipse We are in the UK as well so feel free to pop me a message...always good to network with other print shops

When we started out we started with a Xerox C560 (refurbished) and I hated that thing. I swore I'd never have another Xerox again. We replaced that with a brand new Konica C3070 and coming from the Xerox I absolutely loved it. The prints were super high quality and as we'd bought it direct from Konica UK the tech's were Konica employees and had cars full of parts whenever they turned up so we very rarely had downtime of more than a day.

The thing that frustrated me the most (and I don't know if it was due to our low usage at the time) but we were always going through corona wires. They have a little tool to wipe them clean but they never really made much difference in my opinion so would end up swapping them over (at least they were included in our service contract!)

We ended up selling the KM (regrettably) and now just run a Xerox Versant 80 that we bought at a second machine to run alongside the KM. We only kept the Versant over the KM because the KM had a higher resale price.

Anyway, I'm rambling haha...

I love the Xerox for how easy it is to set front to back registration and the fact I have the pro booklet finisher and square fold trimmer but that's it. Other than that, I wish I had my Konica nearly every day. The Konica is a much higher build quality (you can tell as soon as you touch any part of it), had very few issues with paper feeding, front to back registration was fine once you'd got it set up, and the engineers we had were mostly fab.

I do think I will take a look at Ricoh next time we are buying as I've heard they are rock solid if you get the right model but failing that it will most definitely be back to KM.

As an aside...
This will be largely irrelevant to you as you'll likely be on a service contract but we've just completed our biggest single order on the Versant (18,000 x double sided A4 sheets so 36k impressions total). That job killed off our 2nd btr and our lower fuser pressure roller which cost us around £400 combined to replace (would have been closer to £800 but we managed to find a good deal on the parts) but the biggest issue was the downtime whilst waiting for the parts to arrive. On top of that, we go through a drum for every 2 full sets of toner at the moment and I can imagine if we were on a service contract Xerox wouldn't be too willing to hand out the parts we go through.

@gazfocus

Thanks for your reply.

KM is out for us - we do a lot of mono work on our V180 and even KM themselves (UK) have said their machines won't cope with it.

And 18,000 double sided A4s on a V80!! I'd have just subbed that out to trade!

I've always been on service contracts and top be fair to Xerox they've never baulked at any repairs or throttled supplies over the two decades I've run them. They've virtually rebuilt them at times too and had parts on same-day courier.

At the moment Fuji is probably looking favourite for us with the deal they are offering. And the the change from Xerox would be straightforward.

the-muffin-man said:

Thanks for your reply.

KM is out for us - we do a lot of mono work on our V180 and even KM themselves (UK) have said their machines won't cope with it.

And 18,000 double sided A4s on a V80!! I'd have just subbed that out to trade!

I've always been on service contracts and top be fair to Xerox they've never baulked at any repairs or throttled supplies over the two decades I've run them. They've virtually rebuilt them at times too and had parts on same-day courier.

At the moment Fuji is probably looking favourite for us with the deal they are offering. And the the change from Xerox would be straightforward.

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Hmm I'm suprised that KM have said a machine wouldn't cope with a lot of mono work.

With the 18k sheets of A4, it was 100 copies of 5 documents ranging from 40 to 140 pages so wasn't viable to sub out unfortunately. Had we been on a service contract there would not have been any money in the job if I'm honest so we were only able to do it because we weren't paying a click cost though I definitely think next time I'll look at printing 2 up on A3 and cutting them in half then going through the paper drill vs A4 and having the finisher punch the holes as we had a lot of problems printing that many A4 sheets in one go (even though we were printing them long edge first).

I've always sworn by service contracts and it made me super nervous when the service co terminated our contract on the Xerox. We go through periods where we seem to be spending a lot on the machine but them other times where we go 3 or 4 months where we only have to buy toner. Definitely wouldn't choose to not have a service contract though.

Out of interest what are Fuji offering you?

Update
We now have quotes on some machines and would be interested in what you all think. We initially had to dismiss the Xerox Proficio as it was too expensive, nearly £900 per month which is a bit too much for our small business. So the Xerox man suggested having a look at the Xerox Primelink C9275 instead as it also benefits from not having the dreaded BTR unit. Our quote from him is £640 per mth for the lease over 5 years, click mono 0.0052p A4/SRA3, colour 3p A4/SRA3, staples included, no minimum volume, Fiery server integrated RIP, 2 oversized high capacity feeder, booklet finisher and two fiery impose licenses. They would also give us £1,500 trade in and pay the £1,400 we would have to pay our current company for getting out early of the service contract. Old machine and new machine taken and installed on the same day. I realise we could probably get more for our Versant but we just don’t have the space to keep it with the new machine too until we can sell it.

The Fuji machines quoted; firstly the Apeos C810, imbedded Fiery, same spec as the Primelink but only one impose license, you have to pay for staples, the minimum volume I find odd, they’re saying that “prices are subject to expected minimum monthly volumes, fair usage policy & excludes staples”. The salesman says that Fuji don’t like to enforce a minimum volume as they understand it fluctuates, but at the same time they are talking about 18k clicks a month, our current minimum volume is 5k clicks. The lease is over 5 years at £503 per month, £50 per month RIP support. Mono click 0.0081p and colour 3p single click for A4 and SRA3. No trade in.

Secondly the Revoria SC285 5 (CMYK) same spec, booklet maker etc, same click as above, 5 year lease is £727 per month plus £65 per month for the Fiery RIP support. No trade in.

We are still waiting for another quote to compare with these.

why aren't you considering Ricoh? I'd have thought the C5400/C5410 would be a good fit.

Eclipse said:

Update
We now have quotes on some machines and would be interested in what you all think. We initially had to dismiss the Xerox Proficio as it was too expensive, nearly £900 per month which is a bit too much for our small business. So the Xerox man suggested having a look at the Xerox Primelink C9275 instead as it also benefits from not having the dreaded BTR unit. Our quote from him is £640 per mth for the lease over 5 years, click mono 0.0052p A4/SRA3, colour 3p A4/SRA3, staples included, no minimum volume, Fiery server integrated RIP, 2 oversized high capacity feeder, booklet finisher and two fiery impose licenses. They would also give us £1,500 trade in and pay the £1,400 we would have to pay our current company for getting out early of the service contract. Old machine and new machine taken and installed on the same day. I realise we could probably get more for our Versant but we just don’t have the space to keep it with the new machine too until we can sell it.

The Fuji machines quoted; firstly the Apeos C810, imbedded Fiery, same spec as the Primelink but only one impose license, you have to pay for staples, the minimum volume I find odd, they’re saying that “prices are subject to expected minimum monthly volumes, fair usage policy & excludes staples”. The salesman says that Fuji don’t like to enforce a minimum volume as they understand it fluctuates, but at the same time they are talking about 18k clicks a month, our current minimum volume is 5k clicks. The lease is over 5 years at £503 per month, £50 per month RIP support. Mono click 0.0081p and colour 3p single click for A4 and SRA3. No trade in.

Secondly the Revoria SC285 5 (CMYK) same spec, booklet maker etc, same click as above, 5 year lease is £727 per month plus £65 per month for the Fiery RIP support. No trade in.

We are still waiting for another quote to compare with these.

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The price they've quoted for the Primelink seems very high. We had a quote about 2 years ago for a Versant 280 with the same options as you (minus the impose licenses) and granted things have increased in price lately but we were quoted £493 per month over 5 years and I'd argue that the Versant 280 is a superior machine to the primelinks as the primelinks are essentially Xerox's 'entry level' presses.

Having said that, I don't know how much the impose licenses are and if I were you I'd consider buying a 3rd party impose software rather than having to pay for Fiery Impose each time you buy a new machine. We use Imposition Studio by a company called Devalipi and we quite like it.

As for the price they've offered for your Versant 180...if you want shot of it give me a shout and I'll take it off your hands.

I'd second what bcr has said though. I'd at least get a quote for the Ricoh options. I've got a friend that's got a C5400 with Fiery and high capacity feeder being delivered for £17k inc vat.

Thanks gazfocus for passing on our details to the man you deal with, he rang me today for a chat and is going to supply some prices tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to comparing to the other 2 that are top of our list at the moment. Latest quote for a Primelink C9281 with production booklet finisher for £590 per mth on a 5 year lease. I realise it’s classed as an entry level light production machine but I think with our monthly volume and future plans to retire early it would suit our circumstances.

Re: Ricoh, one man we’re still waiting for quotes from deals with Ricoh too so will have a look at them.

With the 3rd party imposition software, is that something that is a one off payment for or is it a monthly thing?

Do you currently have impose on the v180? If so you can transfer it onto another pc.

I can't say I've ever heard of someone buying two licences, especially if your a small print shop.

Eclipse said:

With the 3rd party imposition software, is that something that is a one off payment for or is it a monthly thing?

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Depends on what you purchase. I'd suggest something simple like Quite Imposing. It's a perpetual license for a little under $1000. Ask a salesperson if they can bundle it in with your machine purchase, that's what we did years ago.

Thanks pippip, I will have a look at doing that.

Eclipse said:

With the 3rd party imposition software, is that something that is a one off payment for or is it a monthly thing?

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With Imposition Studio it’s $199 for a single user license with 1 year of updates or $399 for 3 users and 2 years of updates. Just a one time fee. You can then pay an upgrade if you want the new version when your updates run out or can just continue running it without updates which is what I do (had my license for 5+ years now).

Does anyone have any opinions on bundled -v- stand alone RIPs?

Our current V180 has a stand alone one but all our previous machines had bundled ones.

Fuji and Ricoh are saying bundled is fine for my needs (think the biggest file I've ever sent is 5gb!) as I don't do memory hungry variable data work. And surely a new bundled RIP will be better that the seven year old EX 180 I have now!

Xerox agent is saying you need a stand alone one and doesn't want to quote on bundled.

All quoted so far are Fiery RIPS and include Fiery impose.

the-muffin-man said:

Does anyone have any opinions on bundled -v- stand alone RIPs?

Our current V180 has a stand alone one but all our previous machines had bundled ones.

Fuji and Ricoh are saying bundled is fine for my needs (think the biggest file I've ever sent is 5gb!) as I don't do memory hungry variable data work. And surely a new bundled RIP will be better that the seven year old EX 180 I have now!

Xerox agent is saying you need a stand alone one and doesn't want to quote on bundled.

All quoted so far are Fiery RIPS and include Fiery impose.

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Personally I’ve never ran into an issue that was caused by having a bundled fiery instead of a standalone one. I feel like for most people the only advantage of the standalone is being able to plug in a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Tell the Xerox guy that you’re the customer and you’re not buying a standalone rip just so that he gets a bit more commission.

(Caveat to say, I generally don’t like someone telling me what I can and cannot buy so this guy would be shown the door straight off).

Thanks - kind of confirms my thoughts!

Xerox are out anyway - their deal can't get close to Fuji's. Fuji must be throttling Xerox's prices to gain UK foothold.

the-muffin-man said:

Thanks - kind of confirms my thoughts!

Xerox are out anyway - their deal can't get close to Fuji's. Fuji must be throttling Xerox's prices to gain UK foothold.

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Would be interested to hear what you get offered by Fuji as we will be upgrading in the next year.

Have sent DM as I'd rather not post detailed costs on open forum just yet.

the-muffin-man said:

Does anyone have any opinions on bundled -v- stand alone RIPs?

Our current V180 has a stand alone one but all our previous machines had bundled ones.

Fuji and Ricoh are saying bundled is fine for my needs (think the biggest file I've ever sent is 5gb!) as I don't do memory hungry variable data work. And surely a new bundled RIP will be better that the seven year old EX 180 I have now!

Xerox agent is saying you need a stand alone one and doesn't want to quote on bundled.

All quoted so far are Fiery RIPS and include Fiery impose.

Click to expand...

Get the supplier to specify in writing any restrictions which apply to the bustled RIP vs the standalone.

I know for example with the Ricoh C5300/C5310, the bustled RIP has some restrictions including support for tab printing and some Fiery software modules which are only possible via the standalone.

Recently joined here and interested in this as we are virtually going through the same process now. Has anyone moved from xerox to fuji and is the service any good?