Envelope Printer Experiences

After struggling with our Rena Mach6 for about 2 years, a local distributor offered to buy it back from us. Meaning we have an opening for a new envelope printer that (hopefully) won't make me want to rip my hair out.

Currently we are entertaining the idea of the Xante EnPress. Does anyone have some pros and cons of the machine? And if you only have cons, do you have a different option that you have had good experience with? Ideally we would like to stay away from inkjet, but I am not 100% against it. Our main use for the new machine would be short run full color envelopes and longer run mail merge jobs, #9, #10, 6 3/4. We have a 7110 that has served us well for larger envelopes such as 9x12. Thank you in advance!
 
Are you going to miss full bleed envelopes?
While it was a neat feature it made up less than .5% of the envelopes that we printed. Not to mention, while I admit it might be user error, we always had trouble getting it to actually do a full bleed it was always more trouble then it was worth.

But one year we had some really nice company Christmas cards with full bleed envelopes. And they sure did look sharp! Although we designed it with the muted color scheme that it was limited to.
 
What issues did you have with the mach6? I thought a lot of the fixes from the mach5 made it a decent inkjet printer.
 
What issues did you have with the mach6? I thought a lot of the fixes from the mach5 made it a decent inkjet printer.
Mostly the image quality and reliability of the machine. The print head nozzles would clog up and would have to be cleaned every 25-40 envelopes, depending on the coverage. Our supplier thought that most of our problems were caused by the low humidity of our climate. So we tried to increase how often it did the automatic head cleanings and what not but still no luck. Quite often a job would be running and it would be printing only a partial of the image. We do a lot of envelopes that are numbered so this caused quite a problem.

We were told that it would print well on glossy paper, this was just simply not true. One of the first jobs that we used it for was to imprint mailing addresses on about 5000 magazines. We got it to work but only by attaching a dryer to the end of the machine and situating the address to not hit any of the forwarding wheels in the machine. We were also told that it handled large jobs well but the RIP that we got with it would crash very often on even medium sized jobs and we received very poor technical support on it.

All that being said we are looking to move more towards a digital envelope printed and will have to find a different solution for an imprinter.
 
Strongly recommend iJet Color Pro 1175P with the HP heads. I have the ENpress as well just for wedding invitations. The iJet will run laps around the Xante. Installed in July and have 623,000 on it so far.
 
Strongly recommend iJet Color Pro 1175P with the HP heads. I have the ENpress as well just for wedding invitations. The iJet will run laps around the Xante. Installed in July and have 623,000 on it so far.

I don't think the OP is looking to spend $60k on an envelope printer.
 
Man those demo videos sure make it seem like a beast! We are thinking of replacing our offset press also (We are having trouble finding someone that would be willing to run it). So maybe this machine could cover the offset envelope jobs also. Realistically anything over 10k envelopes we send out anyways. I have reached out to manufactures for a quote. I would not mind spending that amount if it filled the needs that we have.
 
Strongly recommend iJet Color Pro 1175P with the HP heads. I have the ENpress as well just for wedding invitations. The iJet will run laps around the Xante. Installed in July and have 623,000 on it so far.
Does the ink run when you get it wet?
 
I liked the image quality of the Impressia (Ricoh engine), but did not like the way their IQ software handled spot colors in EPS files. I also didn't like their fuser. It was horrible. The roller surface would crease if you looked at it wrong. Too expensive to have a stack of fusers sitting around in case it gets a jam.

The iJet Color Pro 1175P has a beautiful image that I like better than Memjet, and I think is a more reliable head than Memjet. I don't own one but I've been talking to those who do because we are also shopping.

Because of the vacuum belt and adjustable head height you can run much more than just envelopes. Bags, small boxes, and my favorite, short-run pocket folders, just to name a few. You can run stock folders off the shelf from Staples, but I would select some nice stocks and have a converter make them.
 

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We still have a twin tower for long bw and 2 color runs. These machines are nearly free to own at this point. However the machine and my operator are aging out. We bought a envelope feeder for our xerox versant, so the click charge is fixed. So it does not pencil out for "spot color long runs" We can do fake bleeds with it. However it works best for #10s. And I feel 5k is the realistic limit to any run. I just ordered samples for the ijet. However I think I ordered samples in the past and did not like the flat tone color and it seemed to bleed when it got damp.
 
Strongly recommend iJet Color Pro 1175P with the HP heads. I have the ENpress as well just for wedding invitations. The iJet will run laps around the Xante. Installed in July and have 623,000 on it so far.
How to you handle the maintenance/repair ? What keeps the heads from drying out when not in use. btw we have hp latex printers, that have a very low maintenance
 
We still have a twin tower for long bw and 2 color runs. These machines are nearly free to own at this point. However the machine and my operator are aging out. We bought a envelope feeder for our xerox versant, so the click charge is fixed. So it does not pencil out for "spot color long runs" We can do fake bleeds with it. However it works best for #10s. And I feel 5k is the realistic limit to any run. I just ordered samples for the ijet. However I think I ordered samples in the past and did not like the flat tone color and it seemed to bleed when it got damp.
You probably got samples of the Memjet systems. I think the samples from the HP head are more vivid and crisper.
 
To me that is a great demonstration. I would think the same reason the bubble mailer is more resistant to water would be the same reason the ink would be more likely to run because the ink can't bite in as well. If my HP OfficeJet Pro pigment ink is anything close, I can say that the #10 will wrinkle up and break down before the ink shows any sign of running.
 
I know the relyco duraseal #10 envelopes provided better protection for water smear for the memjets but they are also more $$$, that was the reason I was asking if it can do the same on 24# envelopes, I should have added plain 24# envelopes with no special coating.
 
How to you handle the maintenance/repair ? What keeps the heads from drying out when not in use. btw we have hp latex printers, that have a very low maintenance
Everything is user replaceable as far as maintenance, it's just a wiping sled. Nozzles do not dry out, at the end of the day we just turn off the monitors and walk away. It sat the holiday weekend, on Monday we just turned on the monitors and fired away. It will do a cleaning on its own.
 
Mostly the image quality and reliability of the machine. The print head nozzles would clog up and would have to be cleaned every 25-40 envelopes, depending on the coverage. Our supplier thought that most of our problems were caused by the low humidity of our climate. So we tried to increase how often it did the automatic head cleanings and what not but still no luck. Quite often a job would be running and it would be printing only a partial of the image. We do a lot of envelopes that are numbered so this caused quite a problem.

We were told that it would print well on glossy paper, this was just simply not true. One of the first jobs that we used it for was to imprint mailing addresses on about 5000 magazines. We got it to work but only by attaching a dryer to the end of the machine and situating the address to not hit any of the forwarding wheels in the machine. We were also told that it handled large jobs well but the RIP that we got with it would crash very often on even medium sized jobs and we received very poor technical support on it.

All that being said we are looking to move more towards a digital envelope printed and will have to find a different solution for an imprinter.
I too have been struggling with the Mach 6 print head clogging issue. Cannot keep it clean and have to manually clean the print head. If someone has had success with this machine, I wish they would tell me the secret!
 
I too have been struggling with the Mach 6 print head clogging issue. Cannot keep it clean and have to manually clean the print head. If someone has had success with this machine, I wish they would tell me the secret!
Are you in a dry climate? When I was struggling with the same issue I saw a few times people mentioning that being in an arid climate could be a large contribution to that problem. Also it is possible that the capping station is not sealing correctly causing the head to dry out, making sure the capping station is free of debris never hurts.
 

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