If you had it to do over again Konica 8000 vs ?

[sbyrd]

I have a Konica 8000 with a Fiery front end and it has a booklet maker on it. We try to use it to produce book orders but mostly have issues with color and consistency and just the machine running in general.

If I was looking to replace this machine with something more reliable to create booklets what would you purchase/recommend or tell me to stay away from? Booklets are 11x17 folded to 8 1/2 x 11 with double staple in fold.

 

[MailGuru]

What Volume and Frequency?
What paper stock?
Average number of pages (sheets) in the book?
Are the 8.5 x 11 booklets mixed stock? (ex: 80# Gloss Cover for the outside, 70# Gloss text for the insides)

 

[sbyrd]

We are a mail house so each answer to your questions very depending on client needs.

On average 1000 booklet's a week.
24/60 inner or 70 gloss text inner -- 70/80 gloss text cover or 24/60 cover
4 11x17 sheets up to 8 11x17 sheets on average
Yes sometimes they are missed stock and sometimes not

We have 2 HP Indigo 7500's and 2 Screen TrueJetPress 520's and sometimes we use this machine to do small work we can on squeeze in on the other machines.

 

[CTmang]

We had the same setup in our shop but switched out the 8000 for a C1085 when they came out. We kept the booklet maker and had it set up on the 1085 and have much better registration and colour consistency.

 

[jwheeler]

sbyrd, I work for KM as a production specialist. I, along with most of KM, will admit the C8000 turned out to be a bit of a bust. The service issues related to the 2nd fuser, the poor front to back registration, colors running hot on the red, long warm up times, etc. We've had (and currently have) several incentives in an attempt just to get the C8000's out of the field, because they weren't profitable to us on the service. Check with your local sales rep. The new line, the C1085 and C1100's have been very solid products. I've sold about a dozen here and every customer is happy with them...many were upgrades from old C8000's and they have now become my best referrals, after being quite unhappy with the C8000. The new units don't have a 2nd fuser, they run full rated speed on all stocks up to 16pt, the registration is very tight, the reliability has been amazing, and the color is better than ever.

To your point about the booklet maker, I'm guessing you have the SD-506? The 200 page unit with the face trim? I'd recommend getting a demo on the upgraded unit, the SD-513. It now offers 3-knife trim, inline creasing, and a square-back option. You can do up to 4 staples, and up to 4 crease positions (ideal for perfect bound covers). You can also use the top and bottom slitters and creasing on flat sheet output, not just booklets. The paper path is much straighter on this new unit as it no longer has to turn a 90 degree angle.

Good luck in your search!

 

[PrintIT]

sbyrd, I work for KM as a production specialist. I, along with most of KM, will admit the C8000 turned out to be a bit of a bust. The service issues related to the 2nd fuser, the poor front to back registration, colors running hot on the red, long warm up times, etc. We've had (and currently have) several incentives in an attempt just to get the C8000's out of the field, because they weren't profitable to us on the service.

Wow, this is shocking to hear. Back when we were in the process of making KM take our C8000 back because it was such a dog, we were told over and over again that we were the only ones having any issues, and everyone else loved theirs.

 

[Old-School]

IMHO - Canon C700/C800

 

[AP90]

I think if it were me, Id try for a few weeks/months to see if I could squeeze in the work on the Indigo's. That machine will run 25ish 4/4 11x17 a minute. If your planning on doing 1000 booklets a week with an average of 6 pages a booklet, your talking about an extra 2 hours a week run time total to split between 2 indigo's. Maybe even the True screen but its web fed so I doubt it.

If I already had 2 Indigo's running I would try my hardest to get that work on those machines. Quality won't be matched until you get up into the high end Xerox's (1000 and iGen, can't speak for the other companies). Then Id use that money you would have put towards the lease of another machine, +/- $1500/month, and put it towards a booklet maker if thats why you are wanting another digital machine to solely run booklets on. Or if you already have an offline booklet maker, just throw some of that money to having someone work 2 extra hours a week if that gets the prints on the Indigo's.

Curious to see what route you go and if this isn't even an option why its not.

 

[lfelton]

Well our last KM (a C8000E) left the premises a couple of months ago and we haven't even considered a KM for our last couple of presses. Like with PrintIT, KM denied all knowledge of problems with the machine and made absolutely no effort to help us get rid of the 8000 and replace with a working KM press. KM have gone from arguably the market leader in the UK market to pretty much nowhere and they've done it to themselves.

FWIW the Versant 2100 is a great machine. Does what what it's advertised to do. We have a nearly 2 year old one with well over 4M large clicks on it and breakdowns are still at a manageable level. Xerox say that that's not even close to being one of the highest clicking versants. If Xerox had a product with a duty cycle above the Versant that we could afford (1000 is not practical in the UK and iGen5 is stupidly expensive) we'd have bought one of those. As it is, we've installed a Ricoh 9100. The jury's still out on that one! Not plain sailing that's for sure.

 

[Graeme NZ]

Konica 8000 Vs...? Well, anything wins against C8000s - they are dogs. Ugh. A pen and paper gives a C8000 a run for it's money.

I work at a mailhouse where we are in the process of phasing out 10x C8000s. At my particular plant we had 4 until about a year ago, and are currently rolling over to the C1100s. I'm not a Konca fan (MUCH prefer Ricoh), but the C1100s are much better than anything Konica I've worked on. The speed alone makes it worth their while. Front/Back registration is much better (for a KM, still have the odd skew issue here and there) and we do occasionally have problems of toner overflowing and blowing out over the sheets, but the techs have been working on it for a few months and it seems to be getting better. The colour fleet ay my plant now is 2x C1100s, and 3x 8000s, looking at getting one or two more C1100s. The 2x 1100s are by far pulling the most the weight now on colour runs, the 8000s only do a few solid runs a month. Our other plant has completely phased out their C8000s for 6 or 7 C1100s. We run about 1M clicks per month and have a tech in for about once or twice a week. Usually the down time is half a day (including wait time and service time), often faster.

We particularly like the speed of the C1100 on heavier stocks. Runs at almost the same speed as the lightweight stock. Running a postcard job on the C1100 is about 2 to 3 faster than an C8000.

Reliability is pretty good - much less love required than the C8000. Still has colour shifting issues like any KM machine, but it runs for much longer before attention is required.

We don't run booklets here that much so can't comment on that aspect.

 

[chrisg42]

Well our last KM (a C8000E) left the premises a couple of months ago and we haven't even considered a KM for our last couple of presses. Like with PrintIT, KM denied all knowledge of problems with the machine and made absolutely no effort to help us get rid of the 8000 and replace with a working KM press. KM have gone from arguably the market leader in the UK market to pretty much nowhere and they've done it to themselves.

Our experience was different in that KM (with whom we deal direct and not via a dealer) put their hands up to the C8000 problems and made us a good offer on its replacement by a C1085. That's been running well for 12 months now.