Canon 5185 Information and Rip Recommendations

[DigitalPrint]

Hi,

I am looking to get a Canon Colour 5185 Machine for a print/copy business. We currently have a IKON
CPP500(Minolta) that took over a year and a half of hell, to finally get it to print properly. It was a CREO RIP that turned things around, and resolved unbelievable colour issues and inconsistencies. It's like a completely different machine when we took off the Fiery RIP and replaced it with a CREO. I am getting very good colour for the price now.

Anyhow, as a second unit, I was thinking about a Canon 5185. I saw a demo of it and the C1 and was really blown away, but for the price of the 5185 and it's ability to print 50 pages a minute, along with impressive colour quality for the price. I also like that it was a Canon and therefore user friendly for young ever-changing staff, especially with respect to photo-coping jobs. The Minolta (IKON CPP500) royally sucks for photocopying (it's too sensitive to room light) and does not have a very user friendly interface.

My question is has anybody a Canon 5185 or equivalent model in the 30-40 page per minute versions? What RIP would you recommend. The choice is Fiery only either a H1 or a GX100 RIP, The GX100 is about $16,000 more and that isn't even with the Graphic arts package! I don't want to go through what I did with the CPP500, so I am hoping someone has some experience, knowledge or advise. We will probably be printing 80,000-100,000 impression a year, but we have peak rush periods where we can rush lots of prints at given times. My experience with Canon is they it tends to work much better with the Fiery RIPS.

I hope someone can help and I am happy I found this place!

 

[eddie2times]

Re: Canon 5185 Information and Rip Recommendations

Even though I work for a Canon competitor, I will try to give you as unbiased a response as possible.

I'm confused by your email. At first you say you had all sorts of problems with the CPP500, but it all went away with the Creo controller. Then further down you state that Canon works better with Fiery RIPs? I would have thought with your first experience, you would only want to focus on engines with a Creo controller.

Be that as it may, the 5185 does a decent job for color output, but I think you will be sorely disappointed if you were looking for C1 quality. You have two different types of toner and imaging technology, and of course, price point. So the first decision for you is to figure out the engine which get the best output for the budget you are working with.

As for controller options, I know that depending on the model, both KM and Xerox offer Creo as well as Fiery on their color copiers. It has been my experience that both Fiery and Creo can get you to the same color destination; its the matter of getting there that is different. My thoughts for you would be get a demo on both systems, running similar job set ups so that you get a feel for the user interface. The last thing to consider is in service and support from the vendor on the particular controller.