KM C3080 vs VERSANT 180 vs RICOH 7200 vs CANON C910 vs KM C83HC

[Eric Boucher]

Hi,
Making progress in our selection process so I thought I'd share our experience...

We narrowed down our selection to 2 Konica machines : the high chroma C83HC or the standard C3080. We were concerned that the C83HC wouldn't be able to print a regular CMYK job accurately so I had Konica print some color patches. It turns out the C83HC cannot print a regular CMYK job accurately... Sadly. It seems to be a great machine and the "saturated" mode prints out really vibrant colors. But in standard CMYK mode, the blues and reds didn't really come out very well... A 100% Cyan patch came out a little "dull" and a 100% Magenta/100% yellow patch came out a bit orangey, definitely not red. Not very far off, but definitely not as good as the prints on the C3080. I'd probably get both machines if we had the volume...

So we are getting the C3080 with 2 PF-707 high capacity feeders, RU-518 decurling unit, IQ-501 and standard OT-510 receiving unit.

Last thing to decide is the controller : IC-313 Fiery or IC-605 Konica Hikari RIP with AccurioFlux Premium software. Either option come at around the same price...

I welcome any advice in that regard! We don't use impose or any fancy finishing options. We do use virtual printers and standard Fiery options but that's about it. I'm just looking for print quality and ease of use.

Thanks!

 

[Puch]

I think the controller question is really about the in-house attitude regarding change. With Hikari there will be a learning curve for the operators, some workflow concepts must be revised, rethinked. On the other hand, Hikari will be better integrated in the long run. IMHO Konica will eventually get to a point where they will not need EFI any more. They want to pocket the money in full, and they have the knowledge and the production capacity to do that.

 

[Eric Boucher]

I think the controller question is really about the in-house attitude regarding change. With Hikari there will be a learning curve for the operators, some workflow concepts must be revised, rethinked. On the other hand, Hikari will be better integrated in the long run. IMHO Konica will eventually get to a point where they will not need EFI any more. They want to pocket the money in full, and they have the knowledge and the production capacity to do that.

Thanks for your input. I tend to think the same way... We're ready for change. From what I saw of the Accurio software, it seems pretty intuitive and not so different than the way Fiery works. And I want to trust Konica will approach RIP and software the same way they did with hardware and deliver really great products...

 

[jwheeler]

Last thing to decide is the controller : IC-313 Fiery or IC-605 Konica Hikari RIP with AccurioFlux Premium software. Either option come at around the same price...

I welcome any advice in that regard! We don't use impose or any fancy finishing options. We do use virtual printers and standard Fiery options but that's about it. I'm just looking for print quality and ease of use.

Thanks!

We have been very happy with out switch from the Fiery to the KM controller. I've had experience with the Flux software as well. What are you thinking you will need that for? The PS print driver allows you to setup mixed media, tabs, subset finishing, etc...and you can merge jobs within the included Job Centro software as well. Unless you need document cleanup, you may not need the Flux software.

 

[Eric Boucher]

We have been very happy with out switch from the Fiery to the KM controller. I've had experience with the Flux software as well. What are you thinking you will need that for? The PS print driver allows you to setup mixed media, tabs, subset finishing, etc...and you can merge jobs within the included Job Centro software as well. Unless you need document cleanup, you may not need the Flux software.

We use virtual printers. Apparently they only come with the Premium version of the Flux software. We probably won't be using very much of the rest of the options.

The way we work right now is we only use about 6 different medias and I have as many virtual printers set up. We have 4 people sending jobs to the printer directly from Illustrator. They only have to select the virtual printer and not think about anything else. In the past I tried just setting up print presets in Illustrator but it didn't really work so well. Some settings buried in the Fiery menus wouldn't get applied. Maybe I did it wrong, we just got used to working with the virtual printers...

 

[jwheeler]

We use virtual printers. Apparently they only come with the Premium version of the Flux software. We probably won't be using very much of the rest of the options.

The way we work right now is we only use about 6 different medias and I have as many virtual printers set up. We have 4 people sending jobs to the printer directly from Illustrator. They only have to select the virtual printer and not think about anything else. In the past I tried just setting up print presets in Illustrator but it didn't really work so well. Some settings buried in the Fiery menus wouldn't get applied. Maybe I did it wrong, we just got used to working with the virtual printers...

Gotch'a. We are similar in just 6 common types of media (we have 2 of the PF-707 vacuum decks on our C6085 and keep one media in each drawer) and we just use presets. In the standard PS driver from KM, there is a drop down for "Favorite Settings" which has 30 open slots. We just save all of the settings there. It takes 1 click for "Properties" then select the "Favorite" and print. We also set it to "Print/Hold" in the output settings of the preset so you can easily reprint from the machine touch screen if you need more prints. Additionally, we've setup Hot Folders (which is included with the Job Centro/Accurio Print Manager) and we use those for the print-ready PDF's...just drag and drop.

 

[Eric Boucher]

Gotch'a. We are similar in just 6 common types of media (we have 2 of the PF-707 vacuum decks on our C6085 and keep one media in each drawer) and we just use presets. In the standard PS driver from KM, there is a drop down for "Favorite Settings" which has 30 open slots. We just save all of the settings there. It takes 1 click for "Properties" then select the "Favorite" and print. We also set it to "Print/Hold" in the output settings of the preset so you can easily reprint from the machine touch screen if you need more prints. Additionally, we've setup Hot Folders (which is included with the Job Centro/Accurio Print Manager) and we use those for the print-ready PDF's...just drag and drop.

That is very interesting. I have our virtual printers set to Print/Hold as well. I have print presets (with paper size/orientation and virtual printer) set up in Illustrator so that is really just the one thing you need to select before clicking "print". I guess that just saves us a couple clicks from the way you do it. I'm not really sure how much that Accurioflux Premium software is but I have to decide if those 2 clicks are worth the expense...

 

[Shredder]

Thanks for posting your impressions. I've been very curious about other manufacturers especially the versant line but we have been a KM shop for 20+ years. I never have time to visit other manufacturers and see what they are offering.

 

[DYP]

Is anybody out there running the Konica Minolta’s C83hc? I have seen proofs and for what I do the high Chroma would be great but I would like to ask some questions about the durability of it or like build of KM machines.