Inkjet Envelope Printers vs Oki Envelope Printers

JustinB

Well-known member
I had a good time looking at all the envelope printers at Print 13 and I'm curious if anyone has experience going down this road?

I know that all of the memjet based printers are all the same printer. Neopost, Colordyne, iJetPress, Rena.... It's all the same machine. Does anyone have one? What's your opinion of it?

I know it doesn't have the color control of a fiery based system. (I'm an in plant printer, so if the color is off, I can adjust the photoshop file and send it again)

I know it doesn't have the same crisp print as a toner based system.

That aside, what do you guys think of them?

At the show I ran a test of a full color, full bleed, very heavy (100%) coverage 6 3/4 envelope, and the ink cost was $.01 each off of a memjet printer.

The Xante print software showed a cost of around $.15 for the same envelope if I use their system.

I know if I go buy an oki printer and use aftermarket toner I'll still probably be around $.10 each.

If I print off my digital press and convert I'm still around $.12 each

The thought of paying $.02 for an envelopes and $.01 for ink is incredibly appealing.

The printer itself is expensive.... Around $15,000 w/o the rip software (that I don't need because I can adjust the original photoshop files for color matching purposes.) If I switched to this system, I would save at least $500 a month in printing/converting costs.


Opinions?
 
We purchased a Rena Mach 5 about 17 months ago. We paid closer to $20,000 without the RIP software. At the volume we print, the machine paid for itself in savings in about three months.

We WANT to love the printer, but it has been a lot of hassle for us. We constantly have to watch for blank prints, excess ink in non-printing areas, paper jams and mis-feeds, frozen processor issues, runs where the printing ends but the envelopes continue to feed and other miscellaneous issues. Our first machine was a floor demo model, and completely died one day. The replacement was provided at no charge, and its latest issue has been with streaking (ink-free stripes in the print area).

We are not certain all of these issues are the fault of the equipment. We purchased the device from a vendor several hours away, and their version of service has been almost entirely unsatisfactory. They would NOT allow us to purchase a service agreement, and their primary service person seems to have little or no knowledge of the printer.

All that being said, we would purchase another in a heartbeat. The frustrations and hassles have all been offset by the tremendous savings we have realized. We HOPE the problem is with our particular RENAs and service person, but we don't know. When we are next in the market for an envelope printer, we will likely choose another memjet, just not from RENA or the same vendor. We like the looks of the new iJetPress from Printware and it is our current front-runner of choice.
 
I think service will always be an issue, as this device will never reach the critical mass as offset presses did, or other branded digital printers/presses. Printware's response to my service concerns was, "Just buy two of them!"

HP, Brother, and Kyocera all now have page-wide inkjet technology and will eventually surpass Memjet, who is an early but small player.

The ink is still aqueous, and will smear.
 
HP, Brother, and Kyocera all now have page-wide inkjet technology and will eventually surpass Memjet, who is an early but small player.

That's the part that gives me pause in this process. How much longer till someone like HP or KM come out with a press that does what these envelope printers do, but at 1/4 of the cost?

Even if they can, do we think they will? Is the inkjet envelope market big enough for someone like them to want to enter it?

Save for the memjet/astro equipment, almost every other envelope printer is another printer/technology that has been adapted to work on envelopes (I think of the printers with like 10 hp print heads all in a row.)

Is that a correct assessment?
 
I have been using a Memjet (Rena Mach 5) printer for almost two years now. I would have to question the cost of 1 cent for a full coverage 6-3/4 envelope, probably closer to 5-6 cents ea. Anyway the quality issues do not go away. White steaks, black marks and some of the other issues stated above are always going to be an issue with this machine. Full coverage art is going to be the toughest because of these issues. Corner imprints work real well. Since the printer has these quality issues, you a have to constantly clean the print head manually which creates a lot of stoppage and wastes times. So long runs are a bit of a hassle. We don't have a lot of feeding issues but from time to time there is the batch of bad envelopes that will not feed. Color is not quite offset, most customer complaints are that the inks look washed out and blacks look a bit greenish. You can run the machine at full resolution and increase the ink densities but this adds to the ink cost and slows the machine down to about 1/2 speed. Again this is less of an issue on short run corner imprints than full coverage longer runs. We keep the runs from 500 to 10,000 (and dread running 10m). The ink will run when wet, but in two years have never had a complaint about that. We run about 30m envelopes a week on this machine.
 
The white streaks mentioned above would usually go away once you have changed the printhead, usually after 200,000 impressions recommended, Although manually cleaning the print head when the streaks start occurring would extend the life of the printhead to more like twice the recommended lifetime. It's not only the streaks (we have now replaced 2 printheads with less than 200,000 impressions on them) but also while running letterhead there is always what looks like lines of ink on the end of the sheet, so after 500 sheets they look like one solid line. This machine is the second that we have had installed the first totally went cold case on us and then we received a re-furb printer. The issues mentioned above is something that we have encountered more with the re-furb than we ever did with the first machine. The first machine started having issues with stopping printing, sending envelopes through the print engine but no image sprayed, this is the one that just died. The machine is definitely not a production machine, more directed toward the mom and pop shops that maybe do 500 to a 1000 at times maybe 2500 at most. We are hoping for a 2nd generation inkjet system that will far out perform what is currently on the market. The water based ink cartridges for the machine is not cheap,$925.00 for an inkset and $495.00 per printhead
 

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