Re: Future of the 43 Wide Proofer??
Good day.
A short introduction
My name is Charlie Manson (yes, yes LOL), and I am the the Inkjet and Proofing Escalation and Technical Application Group manager for Kodak Graphic Communication Group.
To to clarify a few points
The Iris 43 and 62 Wide imposition proofers are indeed based on the Mutoh engine. The exact model name they have is the Mutoh Falcon 1.
Last year Mutoh approached us and told us that a business decision had been made by them to stop manufacturing and supporting parts for this product. They actually stopped selling the proofer as a whole several years ago.
We then undertook a project to make a last time buy from them and also to look around for other vendors.
We managed to buy enough parts from Mutoh to take us through to the end of March.
We did not find any vendor that either had an existing relationship, or was willing to undertake a partnership with Mutoh.
We did not receive our final inventory of last time buy parts until late 2007 and only then once we had actual parts in hand could we work out how much longer would could actually continue to service these machines at current burn rate.
This and some other unforseen actions meant the letters informing all customers was delayed, but this issue has now been resolved.
We also approached several third party service providers but because of the lack of availability of parts I am not aware of anyone who was willing to undertake future support needs.
I can assure you that as a qualified engineer and a long time employee and advocate of proofing within Iris, Scitex, Creo and now Kodak there are no 'hidden' agenda's behind this activity. The XWide proofers have proven to be an excellent tool for our customers and have LONG outlived their projected shelf life.
It may be that at the end of all this we might have an excess of some parts. If any of you would like to contact me I would be happy to maintain list of interested parties.
There may also be one or two newly refurbished machines available at the end of this March that we can pass on to interested companies.
If I can be of any further assistance please feel free to respond to this thread or email me directly at
[email protected]
Thank you
Charlie