Envelope printing

[NeilPrints]

Does anyone have a good solution for short run digital envelopes. Xante scares me.
17,000.00, the feeder looks like a toy and the s paper path looks like it could be a
problem. Toying with putting my own together. Feeder, printer, conveyor. I would like to
move my small jobs from offset to digital. Offer full color. 38 years and counting in Pittsburgh...
a little sad today. Thanks, Neil

 

[msaeger]

I have put a couple of them together and the xante feeder doesn't look too bad to me but you aren't the first one that said they are too expensive. I keep thinking it would be neat to make a feeder too. I think it would be easiest on a printer like they are using where there is no lift mechanism on the bypass tray and the paper end sensor is on the mainframe so they can just take the bypass tray off and park the conveyer there.

 

[PrintIT]

We have an OKI c931e and I can't really recommend it. Printer itself isn't horrible if you're just running envelopes or an occasional letterhead, but the feeder it comes with is pretty bad. It feeds #10 Regular envelopes decently, but anything else is hit or miss with a lot of jamming.

 

[Risu]

Hi Neilprints, please check PM

 

[Possumgal]

In my experience, the Xante feeder is hit or miss. I usually have more skewed prints and spoilage than I ever did with an Oki. The envelopes travel with the edge on a couple of narrow belts, and if they don't fall on the belt just right, they get skewed or jam. Also, the print is not consistent as far as where it prints on the envelope, it keeps jumping around. I can fan the envelopes before loading and make sure they are all tight against one side guide, but it doesn't make any difference. I think all the hoopla about the feeder comes because their previous feeder was so bad that it makes this one look good, but it's not all that great IMHO.

 

[curiosity]

Try one of the inkjet printers that use the memjet printhead. Roughly <$20k. ROI took no longer than 5 months. Have had it a year and a half and replaced printheads 3 or 4 times.
I'm usually one for high print quality, but accepted this printer's quality (smaller gamut; way less saturation) based on customer acceptance. Production issues with the Xante were a deal breaker, and Versant was too expensive.

 

[gman99]

There's a bit more to the feed mechanism than just getting envelopes to the bypass tray but that's all part of the patented technology in that feeder. Understand, too, that the price includes everything including the software to run it, color matching, etc. But, of course, affordability depends on the volume you'd be running through it. Like PrintIT says, be sure to consider all the different types of envelopes you'd be printing before making your decision.

 

[Yroc]

Xante with a straight shooter is the ticket!! I messed around and demoed a lot of printers, including the Okidata system, and ended up with the Xante and SS. Works very well. The biggest issue we have is that we offer so many envelope types and some can be a bit finicky, but once you get them dialed, they all seem to run just fine. The other nice thing about the Xante as far a skew goes, is that it has an alignment roller that works very well, so as long as the printer can grab the next envelope, even if it's very crooked in the feeder, it will print straight. I found the feeder running smoothly and it had been kicked and was about 1/2" off from side to side, I thought those envelopes would probably have to be tossed, but they were fine.

This video was shot on the slow setting, which we were using for thicker envelopes, but we've found that most our thick envelopes run fine on the fastest setting, which is about double the speed in the video.

https://goo.gl/photos/RnMuiKMk1WByRrP57

 

[jsprint]

We have a new impressia with about 70,000 impressions on it and we have liked it so far, It has the big feeder and #10 , a2, a6, a7, #9 are our most common envelopes and they can all run fine on the medium speed.
On 4 color envelopes with heavy coverage you must set it to the slow setting which is painfully slow and the feeder does not perform as well on this setting.
Also I would note that the quality of images is not very good.
The IQue software is very good I wish fiery would take some lessons from them on this.

It is a good machine but you have to understand its limitations and that there is still room for improvement.

 

[wonderings]

How many envelopes are you running a month that you want to move to digital? We have a Xerox Versant 2100 that runs #10 envelopes like a charm, the Versant 80 does as well I believe. Have not run any other sizes, but with #10 it has been virtually jam free. If your volumes are not massive it might be worth looking at a more versatile digital press that can handle envelopes as well as all the other regular digital printing you might have.

 

[CCF]

We have an Impressia but I wouldn't recommend it. When it was new, we were pretty happy with it but as the machine ages and requires service, it has become a serious production problem. They have no real technician network so you have to go through a lot of tech support emails, calls and delays before a problem is solved. Sometimes problems can't seem to BE solved so we just live with the defect. Often times, their solutions revolve around changing out consumable parts that are often far from the end of their life span and don't fix the problem. We have wasted a lot of parts in this process! It can take days because of the time difference and their lack of tech people. They are all VERY nice and they definitely mean well but ultimately, it isn't a great business model to rebrand someone else's machine and not have a relationship with the service network. So, if turnarounds are important, this probably isn't the machine for you.

Other comments are accurate in that the feeding is hit & miss. Also, the paper path really isn't ideal for envelopes. Something with a straight path is a much better option for an envelope.

Probably the best thing Xante offers is the software. I'm a big fan of it. We use the color management as well as the variable tools and have found it to be easy to use.

We have ordered a Neopost Mach 5 to replace it and I'm counting the days until it arrives!!!

 

[Guest]

We have an Impressia but I wouldn't recommend it. When it was new, we were pretty happy with it but as the machine ages and requires service, it has become a serious production problem. They have no real technician network so you have to go through a lot of tech support emails, calls and delays before a problem is solved. Sometimes problems can't seem to BE solved so we just live with the defect. Often times, their solutions revolve around changing out consumable parts that are often far from the end of their life span and don't fix the problem. We have wasted a lot of parts in this process! It can take days because of the time difference and their lack of tech people. They are all VERY nice and they definitely mean well but ultimately, it isn't a great business model to rebrand someone else's machine and not have a relationship with the service network. So, if turnarounds are important, this probably isn't the machine for you.

Other comments are accurate in that the feeding is hit & miss. Also, the paper path really isn't ideal for envelopes. Something with a straight path is a much better option for an envelope.

Probably the best thing Xante offers is the software. I'm a big fan of it. We use the color management as well as the variable tools and have found it to be easy to use.

We have ordered a Neopost Mach 5 to replace it and I'm counting the days until it arrives!!!

WOW.... we did just the opposite... went from a Formax Colormax 7 to an Impressia. I think once you spend some time with that memjet, you'll be happy to go back to your impressia. I agree with pretty much everything here. Support staff at Xante lacks any sense of urgency in solving production problems and they make you refresh all consumables in an effort to solve issues that often don't need to be changed. Very costly.

However, if you want to trade your Impressia for a Colormax 7, let me know.

 

[CCF]

I just might take you up on that if you are serious! Another day like today and I'm pretty much done! I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours

 

[Shawnd]

Little late to the party, but we have the oki 931e with a straight shooter and it is a love/hate relationship, works great on small #10 envelope jobs (Under 1000). I never have gotten fast speeds out of it, we avg about 1500/hr out of it with a Logo/Return/Permit and addressing with imb barcode. We can only send over 1000 pdfs at a time or the printer chokes, even at that it slows down to crunch the data hence the slow output. The problem we have is when it slows down it throws off the straight shooter feeding and we get envelope jams. Anyone got a fiery hooked up to theirs?

Quality on the printer is top notch, that I do love about it.

 

[Guest]

I just might take you up on that if you are serious! Another day like today and I'm pretty much done! I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours

TOTALLY serious if you have an enterprise feeder.


There still is no perfect envelope solution. We started with RISO, moved to ILLUMINA, went to MemJet FORMAX and are now running IMPRESSIA. Impressia is the best we've found but still has several shortcomings. Xante consumable prices are flat out ridiculous. I cannot believe the insanely short rated life for the drums. Come on Xante/Ricoh... You can do better than that.

We actually found a little trick with the Impressia fuser that has worked for us. When you get the dirty lead edge that looks like it's the width of a feed roller, it is actually caused by the lead edge of the envelope scraping that metal tab right before the fuser roller. You can remove that plate from the fuser and grind that tab down just a little a bit and it eliminates the issue. I'm not really sure what that tab is for in the first place, but the modification doesn't seem to have any negative side effects.

 

[DJimenez]

OKI C931e with Straight Shooter Envelope feeder, a customer of mine has 9 of these and during the holiday times they print millions of envelopes.

 

[Yroc]

Okay, all....you got me feeling good about our Impressia....we've had a few hiccups, but mostly it just runs and works well with great quality.

We bought ours used with about 450K clicks on it, and we've put another 70K in the last 4 months.

Kringle,
Holy cow!! If that fix eliminates the black toner we get on the leading edge, you are a life saver, this has been our #1 issue, really bugs me, but we haven't had a single customer complaint. Also, it disappeared when we replaced the fuser (2 days ago), but I wonder if it will be back when we get some volume through it.

That's crazy what you say about consumables. When we bought our used unit it said the drums 'needed to be replaced' but it wasn't making us replace them. 70K clicks later we are still on the same drums....they print fine, and upon inspection, they look great too.... Fuser was the same way, said to replace, but it was printing fine. We did just replace it as one of the rollers began to wrinkle at the edge of the envelope path, which was causing poor fusing on 8.5x11 sheets, which are just our work orders and invoices, not too big a deal, but we replaced it anyway.

CCF,
Good luck with that Mach5, hope you don't need quality, because I never saw any ink come anywhere close to what the toner printers can do. We are selling to brides, so quality is pretty important.

jsprint,
That sucks you can't print on the fastest speed (envelope lite). I can't handle the medium speed (envelope) after going at 50/min....again, glad I got the straight shooter, if that is really your feeder causing you to print slower, as the Impressia prints great on 90% of our envelopes at the fast speed.

wonderings,
Yeah, I have been hearing the versant prints envelopes great, but then you have the whole click/contract issue, doesn't make sense for envelopes, and not having a contract on that level of machine is pretty scary, at least I wouldn't do it. The cost for printing most our envelope designs, including toner, drum, belt, and fuser wear, is less than $.01 (even more so since our drums seem to last forever...). So even on a $.04 contract, it doesn't make sense for volume.

 

[Guest]

We have a new impressia with about 70,000 impressions on it and we have liked it so far, It has the big feeder and #10 , a2, a6, a7, #9 are our most common envelopes and they can all run fine on the medium speed.
On 4 color envelopes with heavy coverage you must set it to the slow setting which is painfully slow and the feeder does not perform as well on this setting.
Also I would note that the quality of images is not very good.

I was trying to run on envelope lite and was having fusing issues over seams. I was promised it wouldn't happen by the sales rep, but it did. It would actually track toner to the opposite side of the envelope. I went into the service settings (I think by holding the up and down keys for 5 seconds), found the fuser temp and turned it up. Xante "doesn't recommend" doing this.... I guess they would rather me deliver dirty envelopes to my customers? Oh well.... try increasing the fuser temp 10 degrees. Once in the settings you can increase for each paper setting, so make sure you are changing the right one. We use the "envelope" setting.

 

[Denise R]

I have a Oki 3641 that i am very happy with, i print all kinds of envelopes as well as cardstock with it. quality is beautiful it does press down the seams but that is to be expected on a machine like this. i got this machine 2nd hand as i think it is discontinued but i have it since 2012 and use it constantly, i run roughly 4000 envelopes a month. i also own a vip 3000 envelope feeder that i really like, currently i needed to move my machine for lack of space and can no longer use the vip feeder i would like to sell it, it is in perfect condition, if anyone is interested. i am located in New Jersey.

 

[Yroc]

We actually found a little trick with the Impressia fuser that has worked for us. When you get the dirty lead edge that looks like it's the width of a feed roller, it is actually caused by the lead edge of the envelope scraping that metal tab right before the fuser roller. You can remove that plate from the fuser and grind that tab down just a little a bit and it eliminates the issue. I'm not really sure what that tab is for in the first place, but the modification doesn't seem to have any negative side effects.

Kringle,
We started seeing the black edge on a job yesterday, so today I pulled the fuser to look at that tab you are talking about. I saw that it was just an extension, or tab that extends further up off that guide plate. When I went to remove the plate, I noticed that there are 2 slotted holes next to the screws, moving the screws to those holes makes the plate ADJUSTABLE!! So I put it on the widest setting, mark is gone now....hope it stays that way!