Device Life Expectancy

[jstimpson]

Greetings,

We utilize two KM C6000's that are about 3 years old and each have about 6.8 million impressions on them. We do about 185,000 impressions per month on each machine average, but it is more like 400,000 per month for three-four months out of the year and about 100,000 the other months. They have been moderately reliable machines and are under contract. We do not sell "digital printing" but put print outs that we run on them into our product kits. 100% of the printing through these machines has been on 20# or 24# white paper, mostly duplex.

What should my useful life expectancy be on these machines? We had about 30-40 hours of down time last year on both machines. We run two of them for redundancy. I have explored replacing them, but am not sure if it is necessary yet?

Thank you.

 

[arossetti]

For the class of printer the C6000 is in you are beating the snot out of them. Granted you are just running bond paper through them so that extends the life a lot. If your work isn't color critical I would think you would have another 2 years. If you are trying to produce high end work these things would be toast.

 

[Keith]

I would say the life expectancy is as long as they produce what you want at a price you can afford. Unless a new machine has a feature you need.

 

[MailGuru]

Most mid-range digital production presses will typically last 5 to 6 years before the service calls will become so frequent that getting consistent color quality and production becomes a challenge. Just the nature of the beast.

 

[Kiwiprint]

The bizhub PRESS C6000 has a life expectancy of 6 million impressions so you have well and truly hammered them. I would say that to have averaged 3 hours of downtime per month is actually quite acceptable if not admirable given the volumes. I would however suggest that you really should be in a higher specified machine from both a productivity and ROI perspective. That said, if they are going well, and only giving you 3 hours of down time, then keep hammering them until there is an explicit need to upgrade.

 

[BobRym]

Continue to beat them like a drum until they scream for mercy - the answer on when to replace them is in your lease term and/or service costs. As long as they keep doing what you need them to do and the costs do not escalate - no point switching to an unknown process that will likely cost more when you factor in new purchase/lease costs.

 

[cyanman]

As alluded to by others before this is not as easy as a single number answer. There would have been a target design life for the main body frame which is well past any number you would realistically expect a service entity to be happy with. On top of, or more accurately subtracting from this number are such things as the accessories attached to the engine, and how hard you use each of the functions of those accessories. For example a folding unit will have a life cycle based on completely different criteria than the engine it is hooked to.

Then you have to consider your tolerance for downtime. KM will probably not "end of life" the C7000 for several more years, so you can probably keep it on a maintenance agreement, but the click charges will likely escalate with age, and service demand will creep up and take longer to perform as the count mounts up.

The next big factor as stated by Keith above is what your expectations are. What a commercial printer or a marketing department may see as totally unacceptable may not even raise an eyebrow in a workflow that only demands readable text and images for an operator guide printed in house and dropped in a box with a widget.

 

[thebluesdude]

Most suppliers will fall over theirselves to upgrade your kit free of charge to keep the clicks coming in. 5 years is normal and 4-6 million is average but our last mid point Ricoh they have guaranteed the life of the machine to be 5 years or 15 million prints, if you get to the 15 million inside the 5 years they will replace the kit for the duration of the 5 years.