Cannon Imagepress C810 - What do you think???

[Mike619]

I service it. It's actually a very good machine. No active registration though, so that's not great. I would recommend the prismaSync over fiery. If there are problems with calibrating lighter paper, there's a way of using the recommended media and set it up so the machine makes up for difference. I've not had people complain about print quality other than when things wear. I've got one machine with over 19 million on it, I know of another with over 10 million. Rated life is 10 million. Stitchers, booklet makers, pro punch are ok. The pro punch is made by GBC most other manufacturers sell the same thing, same with plockmatic booklet maker

Thank you. When you say “active registration” do you mean that the front to back registration changes as the sheet size various slightly?

 

[Mike619]

From my experience with Canon, I would not recommend it.

Any particular reason why not?

 

[Mike619]

I don't think you should go for it.

Why not?

 

[Mike619]

We've been very happy with our C810s. My only experience to compare with is Xerox and the quality is lightyears ahead of Xerox for sure. Service and uptime has also been better than Xerox was this last year. We've been running the 810 since December and then added a second 810 and a 910.

how does it run all different kinds of paper? Are there particular papers that are more of a challenge to run?
-- It james up on some heavier stocks and for some reason flipping the stack upsidedown always fixes the problem immediately.

how does it do with carbonless paper?
-- We run a lot of NCR forms and so far no problems.

how does it do with 130#gloss cover in 19 x 13 size?
-- Haven't done a ton of 19x13 size but it does fine on the 18x12 size

what about label stock? Pre-die cut labels on 8.5 x 11 sheets?
-- No issues at all with label stocks, way way better than Xerox. It also runs transparency sheets 1000 times faster. I think I shed tears of joy the first time I had to run them because it just... ran them with no jams and Xerox would only run like 5 sheets at a time.

how often is the machine down for service? How good is the service when it is down? How quick is the service?
-- I'm sure this is going to be localized but our service at both our shop locations has been timely and quick.

does anyone have any of the attached stitchers or booklet makers? how do you like those things?
-- we have both and again, lightyears ahead of xerox in this department in terms of ease of setup and accuracy.

how is the registration from front to back on all different types of papers?
--- ah, this is a weaker point on this machine. The registration tends to drift no matter what we do. It resets though when you reprint the same job so if we are doing a longer run we print it in batches so the registation will reset (usually 250 sheets). We are using Fiery though and I think it's the culprit like sertech says.

how has the supply chain been for getting things like parts, drums, toner, feed wheels, any kind of filters, etc?
--- we haven't had any issues, the auto toner resupply system has been super. I don't have to think about it at all or place the orders the toner just arrives.


We've run into this issue with both our 810s and same with having to reinstall multiple times. Our 910 has the better fiery and doesn't have this problem.


We solved this problem by using the spectrometer and then forcing the canon to use one color profile for all our papers so that it doesn't try to do it's own thing. It got us way better color consistency than their built in color profiling system that has 5 different options that are too hard to keep in-spec.

Wow. Thank you for this awesome review. Incredible amount of detail. And insight.

With my current Xerox 180 set up, sometimes I would have some difficulty running cover stocks, and then I would just manually curl the pile of sheets upward, and that would help a whole lot. Also, using rubber rejuvenator spray on the feed rollers helps a lot as well.

I appreciate the insight on the fiery situation as well. That might be something to discuss with my sales rep.

I was comparing the customer expectation guide of the 810 to the Xerox 180 that I currently have. It seems that when you get into the coated stock and cover stock, those types of stocks tend to run much slower on the canon, than the Xerox. That’s just based on the customer expectation guide, if I’m reading it correctly, anyway. I’m wondering what your experience is with the speed on those thicker and coated stocks? Maybe compared to the Xerox you mentioned?

You said you were comparing it to your Xerox. Which Xerox do you have or did you have?

A spectrophotometer is definitely on the list of things to get with the machine, so I’m hoping that makes things go smoothly and I appreciate you relaying your experience with that as well.

As far as the quality goes, when we went to get a demo on the canon 910, they printed out a single 8.5 x 11 sheet with an entire novel printed on one side in super super tiny text. when you looked at it with a loop, you could read every word clearly. it was quite impressive. I don’t remember what size the text was but it was like a 10th of a point or something ridiculous. LOL!

Congratulations on adding two machines. Sounds like you are getting some crazy volume. Glad to see it.

 

[jwheeler]

Unfortunately, I’ve only had this machine for 2 weeks now. I’m having some issues with it but unrelated to your issues. I’m coming from a canon 710 so it’s seems like a huge upgrade as far was speed. The sales guy mentioned that it does not pause but mine does pause like how you are mentioning. I’m have issues with 100lb gloss text printing in full saturation black. Seems like the fuser gets too hot and wrinkles the paper. And having a lot of fluttering sounds from the gray that’s picking up the 100lb text as well. Some shifting issues too. I have the iq501 so it’s easy and quick to calibrate.

Still learning the machine so I cannot comment too much.

Is the black a rich black or just 100K with no CMY? I've found that just 100% black ends up producing the best solid black and this results in less toner being on the thinner paper (like 100# text) and should be less likely to wrinkle up. Make sure you've also set the machine to the correct GSM setting.

In regards to the registration and IQ-501, there's 2 steps that if done properly, you shouldn't be getting registration issues. You'll want to always do the 'both-sides' alignment when first setting up your paper. Then you'll also need to make sure you have it turned on in the print driver to check every sheet as it's printing. You'll know it's doing this because the IQ will add it's own registration marks in the corners just outside of your artwork. This only works if you're printing on a sheet that is larger than your finished size.

 

[kslight]

did not think it was one 'manufacturer'.

KM had a big fire. The last 6
Months of having our 6085 following this fire was a very rough period for toner, unsure if it’s better today as i don’t have the machine, but I don’t have these issues with our new machine.

 

[kslight]

@Robohopar , what sort of volume and media do you run on your Konica C7090? What issues have you had or have you been totally happy with it?

At first we only had a C6085, then wanted to get a 2nd one. Unlike @kslight , we've been very happy with the C6085. Unfortunately, they didn't have any more in inventory, so we were forced to get a C7090 and we regret it (had it for 10 months now). It's actually a downgrade, and even the techs say so. It's clearly the same engine as their lower-end C3070 that has been sped up. It has the same drums, fuser, etc. Therefore, the parts wear out much faster than our C6085 resulting in constant color shifting. I used to work at KM and the C3070 was a solid series for lower volumes. It seems that it can't keep up running at 90 or 100ppm and higher volumes.

Luckily KM's service is excellent, but the tech is here about once a week or every other week to fix it. When it is running optimally, the colors are amazing, and it has no problem running any media we throw at it including 16pt C2S or even 14pt Synaps synthetic media. The front/back registration is excellent (we do have the IQ-501).

Another downside is even though it's supposed to be faster (90ppm compared to 85ppm on the C6085), it's significantly slower than the C6085 when running mixed media. We run a lot of training manuals that are 4/4 on 24# for the main paper, and 90# index divider tabs mixed in, 3-hold punched in-line. The C6085 runs this without ever pausing, yet the C7090 constantly pauses to make adjustments. We've timed the same job and each set will take 18 seconds on the C6085, vs 30-35 seconds on the C7090.

Usually I'm a bit proponent of KM, but unfortunately I recommend people pass on this unit. Does anyone else have similar experiences on the C7090?

Ironically, our km sales team presented the 7090 to me as an upgrade from the 6085, I never received a live demo of the machine but I definitely told them it didn’t look like one to me..

 

[Robohopar]

Is the black a rich black or just 100K with no CMY? I've found that just 100% black ends up producing the best solid black and this results in less toner being on the thinner paper (like 100# text) and should be less likely to wrinkle up. Make sure you've also set the machine to the correct GSM setting.

In regards to the registration and IQ-501, there's 2 steps that if done properly, you shouldn't be getting registration issues. You'll want to always do the 'both-sides' alignment when first setting up your paper. Then you'll also need to make sure you have it turned on in the print driver to check every sheet as it's printing. You'll know it's doing this because the IQ will add it's own registration marks in the corners just outside of your artwork. This only works if you're printing on a sheet that is larger than your finished size.

Thanks for the tips.

So for the black, I have not tested the 100% k value vs the 60/40/40/100 we are usually set the rich black values at. I’ll have to try it out and test. As for the wrinkling, the GSM is set to the correct setting. My tech lowered the value from the service end I think which makes it run cooler even at the GSM setting it’s supposed to be running at…which I don’t think is correct. It made the finish of the prints less glossy and a lot duller. We are still working on this issue. What I did notice is on my files that are running through that are not a full saturation black background, it runs fine without wrinkling. Just to test, I’ll run it ar 100% k instead of the 60/40/40/100 values and see if it still wrinkles.

I noticed on my canon, when I would want to get a nice darker gray, the canon would produce horrible grays. Blotchy and horrible looking. I would mix CMYK to get a very similar gray and it would print beautifully.

As for the IQ 501, I usually impose and use up most of my sheets so the real time front back registration doesn’t really work. When you first setup the auto measure, how many sheets do you have it print to register?

 

[Robohopar]

Thank you very much for your input. It is greatly appreciated. I am considering an 810 so that might be somewhat of an upgrade. I’m very surprised to hear that you were getting 16 point stock through there. That sounds like that must be quite a bit more than 350 GSM, right? I am sorry to hear that you were having some of the issues that you were having with the density uniformity. I know on my Xerox versant 180, there is actually an adjustment for density uniformity where you actually print out a target sheet with color bands on it and rescan it in. The machine reads the sheet and then makes the adjustments. It’s a very quick process and seems to work pretty well.

I run 16pt on there all day if I needed too. Don’t let the techs tell you otherwise. I would find that the best tray to run it on was the bottom tray of the 3 tray feeder. It’s a straight shot out.

As for the density uniformity, I think it might be another issue…nonetheless…it’s a serious issue for me. If I find a solution, I’ll chime in.

 

[TJPrinter]

I had high hopes for the C810 but Canon oversold the abilities of this model. I went from a Versant 80 to the C810 and had no improvement, only lost productivity.

What I liked about the C810
For customers that liked gloss it gave me the ability to increase the level of gloss on coated stock.

The finisher had a nice jogger on it (not a big deal but I’m trying to find the positives).

The finisher produced booklets slightly faster than the Xerox production finisher.

What I didn’t like about the C810
Registration was not consistent, especially front to back. You could get it almost spot on but it would start to move during a run. Stop align it to be spot on again and once again it would start to shift.

Color was very good but once again it would start to shift especially on heavy dark colors throughout the run. User error? Not really, Canon sent their color specialist here from out of state just to make sure I was doing everything correctly. Color would still shift throughout the run.

Speed for coated stock was not good at all and you’re correct to notice this in the customer expectation document. For longer runs with variable data the slower speed could add hours onto the runtime.

Envelope printing is okay but not even close to the Versant. They had to make multiple trips to add tape between the engine and finisher so the envelopes would not get jammed. And then they said to just call them if I have any other envelopes that won’t run, I don’t have time for that.

Automatic tray switching was terrible. There was a delay of almost 1 minute every time it would switch to another tray. This is for the same stock and weight not mixed media.

Toner would build up on the rollers of my Duplo DC-618 and I would have to constantly clean it off especially heavy solids. I even had problems with toner transferring to other sheets when using a Rollem with a friction feeder. I’ve had a Versant 280 here for about 1½ years and have never had to clean toner off the Duplo rollers and I never have toner transfer when using a friction feeder.

The Versant 280 holds registration and color significantly better than the C810 and it’s a far more productive machine so if you’re looking to move up from the V180 then the C810 is not it.

As an fyi, the C710, C810 and C910 are identical machines, there is not one thing different about them. You pay for a license to run it at either 70, 80 or 90 ppm. You’ll also notice when looking at the CED there is very little improvement in speed on coated stock between models because it uses the same fuser that just can’t keep up.

Take a really good look at Ricoh if you want to upgrade from the Versant 180 or take a chance on the Versant 280 (if they can right the ship) or perhaps the new Canon V800 has fixed the issues I had but I would not recommend going with the C810 as an upgrade.

 

[kslight]

Thanks for the tips.

So for the black, I have not tested the 100% k value vs the 60/40/40/100 we are usually set the rich black values at. I’ll have to try it out and test. As for the wrinkling, the GSM is set to the correct setting. My tech lowered the value from the service end I think which makes it run cooler even at the GSM setting it’s supposed to be running at…which I don’t think is correct. It made the finish of the prints less glossy and a lot duller. We are still working on this issue. What I did notice is on my files that are running through that are not a full saturation black background, it runs fine without wrinkling. Just to test, I’ll run it ar 100% k instead of the 60/40/40/100 values and see if it still wrinkles.

I noticed on my canon, when I would want to get a nice darker gray, the canon would produce horrible grays. Blotchy and horrible looking. I would mix CMYK to get a very similar gray and it would print beautifully.

As for the IQ 501, I usually impose and use up most of my sheets so the real time front back registration doesn’t really work. When you first setup the auto measure, how many sheets do you have it print to register?

The “gotchas” of the iq 501, from my own experience (YMMV)….which I wasn’t aware of until I had the machine.

1. The sensors / cameras get dirty and though you have a cleaning wand, it really isn’t effective at doing anything except pushing the dust further back in the machine. The system wasn’t engineered for user cleaning. There were many times I simply couldn’t use the iq until a tech came out and begrudgingly took the whole thing apart and cleaned it, only for the error to reappear an hour later. Without the iq, the machine would register poorly.

2. When it’s dirty the iq will cease to function, this can occur in the middle of the print run and force you to cancel the job.

3. If you choose to run the iq concurrent with the print job (ie: turn on its marks and measurement), every time the printer stops for any reason (unload prints, load paper, toner, print a proof, printer adjusting) it will take several minutes for the machine to start printing again. For this reason I rarely used this aspect of the iq, instead just saving the adjustment to my paper settings and hope for the best.

4. Though the iq was generally effective, it never could automatically dial in 16pt for me - I had to make manual adjustments to remove skew, etc, and even then it was really only passable at registering 16pt. Night and day difference compared to the same paper on our Ricoh - the Ricoh registration has been near perfect for me.


As an aside, the paper path of the 6085 with IQ is like a rollercoaster inside and ours struggled running heavier stocks like 16pt. You are better off with a straight paper path if these stocks are important, imho.

 

[jwheeler]

As for the IQ 501, I usually impose and use up most of my sheets so the real time front back registration doesn’t really work. When you first setup the auto measure, how many sheets do you have it print to register?

We impose everything to use up the sheet as well, but the marks are far enough towards the edges that we're still able to use the feature if we want. As for the first step auto measure, usually 1 sheet is all we need...occasionally a 2nd sheet.

 

[jwheeler]

The “gotchas” of the iq 501, from my own experience (YMMV)….which I wasn’t aware of until I had the machine.

1. The sensors / cameras get dirty and though you have a cleaning wand, it really isn’t effective at doing anything except pushing the dust further back in the machine. The system wasn’t engineered for user cleaning. There were many times I simply couldn’t use the iq until a tech came out and begrudgingly took the whole thing apart and cleaned it, only for the error to reappear an hour later. Without the iq, the machine would register poorly.

2. When it’s dirty the iq will cease to function, this can occur in the middle of the print run and force you to cancel the job.

3. If you choose to run the iq concurrent with the print job (ie: turn on its marks and measurement), every time the printer stops for any reason (unload prints, load paper, toner, print a proof, printer adjusting) it will take several minutes for the machine to start printing again. For this reason I rarely used this aspect of the iq, instead just saving the adjustment to my paper settings and hope for the best.

4. Though the iq was generally effective, it never could automatically dial in 16pt for me - I had to make manual adjustments to remove skew, etc, and even then it was really only passable at registering 16pt. Night and day difference compared to the same paper on our Ricoh - the Ricoh registration has been near perfect for me.


As an aside, the paper path of the 6085 with IQ is like a rollercoaster inside and ours struggled running heavier stocks like 16pt. You are better off with a straight paper path if these stocks are important, imho.

Bummer you had such a bad experience @kslight. We've had our C6085 with the IQ for 2.5 years now and never had the dirty sensor issue you're talking about. However, we don't have offset presses....purely a digital shop and we keep a very clean environment. We have the employees vacuum and dust everything weekly. We do have a pause at the start of jobs for it to warm up if we're using the active features, but it's maybe 30 seconds, not several minutes. I wonder if you got a lemon?

As for the last comment regarding the paper path through the IQ, I'm not sure what you mean about it being a roller coaster. It's a straight path as shown in this video (maybe a slight hump?) We rarely, if ever, get jams in the IQ. The jams we do get are usually just as the paper enters the engine or thinner paper in the fuser or ADU sections.

I do keep hearing great things about the Ricoh's and our latest experience with the C7090 might sway us that direction for future purchases if they don't come out with something significantly different by then. It sounds minor, but one of the things keeping us with the KM's is how easy they are to setup tabs in the KM controller (we don't have any Fiery's on the KM's). We are a county in-plant so we print lots of manuals that go into 3-ring binders, and they have divider tabs. These manuals can be 200-600 pages long with 5-25 divider tabs. With the KM controller, we can easily typeset the text that appears on the ear of the tab and specify where the tabs go in the document, then save that setting for future reprints. We can even apply the settings to updated versions of the manual. This wasn't so easy with the Fiery.

 

[kslight]

Bummer you had such a bad experience @kslight. We've had our C6085 with the IQ for 2.5 years now and never had the dirty sensor issue you're talking about. However, we don't have offset presses....purely a digital shop and we keep a very clean environment. We have the employees vacuum and dust everything weekly. We do have a pause at the start of jobs for it to warm up if we're using the active features, but it's maybe 30 seconds, not several minutes. I wonder if you got a lemon?

As for the last comment regarding the paper path through the IQ, I'm not sure what you mean about it being a roller coaster. It's a straight path as shown in this video (maybe a slight hump?) We rarely, if ever, get jams in the IQ. The jams we do get are usually just as the paper enters the engine or thinner paper in the fuser or ADU sections.

I do keep hearing great things about the Ricoh's and our latest experience with the C7090 might sway us that direction for future purchases if they don't come out with something significantly different by then. It sounds minor, but one of the things keeping us with the KM's is how easy they are to setup tabs in the KM controller (we don't have any Fiery's on the KM's). We are a county in-plant so we print lots of manuals that go into 3-ring binders, and they have divider tabs. These manuals can be 200-600 pages long with 5-25 divider tabs. With the KM controller, we can easily typeset the text that appears on the ear of the tab and specify where the tabs go in the document, then save that setting for future reprints. We can even apply the settings to updated versions of the manual. This wasn't so easy with the Fiery.

Unsure - I was brought after the machine was on year 3. Not abused or anything, at the time the machine was removed it only had a few million on it, seemed relatively low volume for this machine. I blame a lot of our issues on the local branch of KM direct service, there were other serious issues we couldn’t get resolved for whatever reasons. I had spoken to other owners of the 6085 in our area and all had similar experiences as me.

We are digital only, have one printer in its own climate controlled room (printing is only a small part of our operation).

The rollercoaster comment refers to the entire paper path, not just the IQ. My understanding late in the process is our machine was equipped with an older relay design which also could have been part of our issues, but i found the paper path was not straight and had several sharp turns where jams were frequent, possibly because of that relay unit, and the iq, and the booklet finisher equipped.

I’m not used to setting tabs at the controller level, I used to just set them with Indesign. The Ricoh isn’t completely perfect but it is a massive relief to my productivity to not need to fight a machine or service, and have very rarely needed to see service in 7 months.

 

[tngcas]

You said you were comparing it to your Xerox. Which Xerox do you have or did you have?

A spectrophotometer is definitely on the list of things to get with the machine, so I’m hoping that makes things go smoothly and I appreciate you relaying your experience with that as well.

Congratulations on adding two machines. Sounds like you are getting some crazy volume. Glad to see it.

We had two Xerox V2100s. The 910 is faster on cardstock than the 810 for sure. The 810 is a bit painful compared to the speed we had with the 2100s. Having said that, we had the two Xerox V2100s and the C810 in the same shop for 8 months and we still ended up doing almost all of our cardstock volume on the 810 because with the color/drum issue the 810 was more reliable. Even with the lower speed it was less wasteful to use the 810 than to hope the V2100s wouldn't ruin a bunch of sheets when a drum failed.

I don't think we really have crazy volumes but we have strict deadlines so we build redundancy so that if one machine goes down we aren't late on our deadlines.

 

[Sertech]

Thank you. When you say “active registration” do you mean that the front to back registration changes as the sheet size various slightly?

Active registration uses two sensors and usually 2 motors to change speed on sides of paper. Not active registration is paper hits a registration roller, stops and buckles to straighten. The V10000, V10010 series uses a metal edge on operator side to butt the paper against and the registration roller. The 810 series uses only a registration roller.

 

[namelessentity]

We have a C750, and a 10000. I guess I'm spoiled, but I would rather be down for two days on our 10000 than run anything on the 750. Absolute garbage front/back registration, constant "adjusting", and it loves to jam on the simplest media. I hate running it.

Unless the 810 has some massive upgrades, I would stay far away from the 3 digit Canon machines.

 

[Sertech]

We have a C750, and a 10000. I guess I'm spoiled, but I would rather be down for two days on our 10000 than run anything on the 750. Absolute garbage front/back registration, constant "adjusting", and it loves to jam on the simplest media. I hate running it.

Unless the 810 has some massive upgrades, I would stay far away from the 3 digit Canon machines.

There's a reason it costs more. Canon did change a setting for the 710-910 series. You can choose speed priority to keep speed up. You can barely tell in print quality. Yeah, the 10000/10010 series is way better. Print quality is better too. The 3 digit series machines are for light production. The prismaSync helps with the registration. It adjusts electronically and stays with the media

 

[printing656]

The x00 and x10 series of Canon discussed here is not designed for a print shop with heavy use. The only difference is speed. The front to back registration will be terrible on 12x18. The first 200 sheets are fine, then it will work it's way off. It's a known issue for years. The Canon cronies are aware of the problem, but the company is too proud to fix it. Check the 'official machine specs'...2 mm is all they have to achieve...good luck lining up the crop marks! The solution is to only run simplex and run your sheets through twice. What a joke.
Test the colors on a variety of jobs. Again, from my experience you'll get some prints that are absolutely terrible that other machines like KM and Ricoh rip and print producing the correct colors with no problem.
Try running 12x18 out of the engine drawers. Good luck. Those drawers are only designed for bond paper. Do you want a double detect from the engine drawers? Forget it. Only the POD deck and the large side cart have double detects.
Oh, but don't expect to get rated speeds from the POD deck if you are using drawer 4 with mixed media.
I had a large Canon 6010/7010 years ago and that couldn't maintain the same color in a run if it's life depended on it.
I'm not familiar with the new V series. I may look at it some time in the future after the rest of the Canon nuts (I mean customers) have dealt with whatever new stupid 'features' their engineers stuck into it.

 

[Gal]

my experience with canon C800 was bad, the machine broke all the time and we needed parts every 50K prints.
I recommend you to check really good before you buy and maybe go to the new series they have.