Konica 1085/1100 overall thoughts

[bhm8hwcm]

I recently demoed a KM 1085 and Ricoh 7110. Will be looking at Versant 2100 very soon as well. KM and Ricoh fairly close in price...not sure about Xerox yet.

I am trying to find people's thoughts on the 1085/1100 on the forum but have found very little in the posts.

Was quite impressed with both KM and Ricoh. I preferred the ink gloss on the KM as I believe it is closer to offset. Quality between the 2 of them seemed quite comparable. Ricoh has the advantage of the the white and clear (if it works as well as they say it does).

I have had KM before so I know the machines are fairly solid. I have not had experience with Ricoh and I know they are newer to the production game so not sure of how the machines tend to perform over 5 years.

Any thoughts on the above? Any specific thoughts on the KM 1085/1100 machine? I am actually looking to move some work off my offset machine to digital.

 

[Clibman]

I have a Konica 8000 and a C1100. 1100 is very solid and reliable and much better registration front to back compared to the 8000. We did a demo on the Versant and found it to be very solid, Konica was less expensive to lease and maintain.

 

[dxprinting]

I purchased the Ricoh 7110x and LOVE IT! We have run over 450,000 copies in 2 months and no major issues. Ricoh here in Atlanta has been very responsive and love working with them.
We made this move from a KM 7000 and it is really day and night difference.

 

[Wunder08]

We also looked hard at the Versant, but ultimately bought a 1000. The vacuum system on the 1000 was a key feature and we have had very few jams over 400K run so far all 13x19 or 11x17, but had some jams even during the Versant demo. The Versant has a cut out of the fitting that holds a drive roller on their feed system. The fact that they considered it a nice feature to reach the drive roller to clean it as it [FONT=&quot]accumulates [/FONT]debris indicated to us that Konica has a better drive system. That said we did like the Versant, its by no means a bad machine, it was a close decision and the Chicago demo center that Fuji has built is great. Its fun watching the 1000 run full rated speed on #80 cover 13x19.

 

[bhm8hwcm]

Hi thanks for the responses.

Wunder08 you mention a 1000...are you referring to the KMC1100 or a Xerox 1000? How have you found the color consistency to be day to day?

 

[Marjuchi]

I recently demoed a KM 1085 and Ricoh 7110. Will be looking at Versant 2100 very soon as well. KM and Ricoh fairly close in price...not sure about Xerox yet.

I am trying to find people's thoughts on the 1085/1100 on the forum but have found very little in the posts.

Was quite impressed with both KM and Ricoh. I preferred the ink gloss on the KM as I believe it is closer to offset. Quality between the 2 of them seemed quite comparable. Ricoh has the advantage of the the white and clear (if it works as well as they say it does).

I have had KM before so I know the machines are fairly solid. I have not had experience with Ricoh and I know they are newer to the production game so not sure of how the machines tend to perform over 5 years.

Any thoughts on the above? Any specific thoughts on the KM 1085/1100 machine? I am actually looking to move some work off my offset machine to digital.

We are in the same boat like you, looking to upgrade our Konica C600 Press with newer Konica, so I was demoed on Konica 1085 and Konica 1060 L. I have to tell you that I˙m little bit disappointed with printing sheets tested on 1085, especially with halftones which look much better on Konica 1060, almost like in offset (and even better). 1085 has more shiny look (due to wax in toner particles) like you printed UV coating on it, so not fits with our digital/offset integrity. Today I asked experienced designer who came to collect gallery exhibition invitations if they are printed on offset or digital, and he didn`t have a clue. Invitations were printed on our Konica C6000.
We want to shift more jobs to digital from offset, so I thought that I will get with 1085 solution for that, but just right now I don`t know what is my next move, buy 1085 which is almost three times more expensive than 1060 (but with almost half of price of Konica 6000 for pay per click), buy Konica 1060 and keep Konica 6000 together with 1060 in digital department, buy used Konica C8000 (demoed also, satisfied with test prints) or wait for Drupa and some new machines?

In the printing shop where I was demoed on Konica 1085, there was also Ricoh C901 Graphic Edition, but printing quality is far away from Konica 1085, 6000 or 1060 (so I was not impressed with Ricoh).

I also tested Xerox Versant 2100 which seems pretty good, but only on 150 lpi halftone, as on 175 lpi moire started to appear. Versant is more priced than Konica 1085 which is almost 3 times more expensive than Konica 1060, but for Konica 1085 I was offered almost 2 times cheaper price per click.

On 1085 I don`t like thick layer of toner applied on paper, 4 color registration is bad on thick papers (tiny white text on black background is blurred), positive text is jagged (maybe depends on type of screen), so another Konica 1060 is maybe definitely better solution for offset printers like us, as we can not change litho with digital. Digital is just bypass from 1 copy to let we say 1000 (break even point). We print a lot of cardboard for pharmaceutical industry, whhich can not be print on digital (except maybe on HP Indigo 10000). So in my opinion, if you are an offset printer, there is no need to invest a lot of money in digital printing machine like 1085 as you can satisfy that print range to 1000 sheets with cheaper and in this case even better machine (comparing print quality).

As I`ve thoroughly tested every possible digital machine on the market in my country until now (except Xerox 800/1000), in my opinion, I can say that from historical point of you, best looking to offset machines were:
1. Xerox 250 (I immediately bought it after I tested it)
2. Konica 6000 Press (I immediately bought it after I tested it)
3. Konica 1060

Guys from Konica told me that demoed 1085 machine has service to be done, as lot of print clicks have been made in demoed printing shop (due to more demands due to tourist season), but I think that this is general state of 1085 (shiny look and blurry halftones), so invest in 1085 is to risky for me. Also, guys from Konica promised to send me a printed brochure of offset to digital comparison, made on 1085. So after I receive brochure I will decide about my next steps.
I`m not in hurry, we print a lot on our C6000 these days, and my choice has to be 100% sure. Used Konica 8000 or new Konica 1060 are less risky solutions...

What do you think?.... Any better solution from you?

 

[Craig]

Look away from Konica as other options are available. Don't get hung up on changing line screens either. It is NOT a press and images better with different line screens than a press.

 

[grafix]

Have you decided which way to go? I am asking because I did an extensive 6 hour test on the Konica Minolta 1085. I also tested the Ricoh 7110x but with a shorter test time due to my time constraints. I am now looking at the Xerox 1000i which looks interesting.

In KM vs Ricoh tests, Ricoh comes out the winner. Due to the high dpi employed, fine line detail is intact whereas KM looses it. Where there are high contrast areas, KM tended to blow out the details, Ricoh kept it intact.

Both showed some signs of banding in grayscale tests. It is something that most, if not all machine suffer from. Xerox claims they have no such problem but I have not testing the 1000i to verify.

The Ricoh adding a 5th color station as Xerox has, is something that puts them ahead of the game. I'll bet the next KM product will offer the same in order to level the playing field.

Between KM and Ricoh, image reproduction was pretty close. You would need to look close to see the differences. Is that fine detail where Ricoh pulls ahead.

As for registration front/back, KM has a slight skew, Ricoh was tighter.

As for trail edge bleeding that some has seen on the Xerox 1000i, it can be seen on the KM but the Ricoh is super clean.

Black fills are very rich and dense, not the case with KM. Perhaps the KM powered by Creo processed the black differently than the Fiery on Ricoh.

Availability of KM is on the floor. Ricoh is backordered so expect somewhere between 30-60 days at best.

 

[blazschmidt]

Hello,

We have KM 1100 with hikari rip for two months and we are little disapointed with machine. We also have KM 1060 and didnt had any problems. The print quality is great.

But for KM 1100 we have two major problems which we really dont like and would like to be fix or we dont know what we are going to do.

1. Trail edge bleeding - color being darker in the trailing edge in paper feed direction and lighter in oposite (called as sweeping). Text is looking blury. And feels like gradient in element where shouldnt be.

2. Because of misregistration of colors we get white lines in the end of element (specialy if it is on dark object). We can use auto trapping but it doesnt solve the problem.

Do you think there is any solution for this problems because service from KM is working 2 months on this issues and dont have the anwser. Last time they told me it cannot get any better and will have to live with it...

I realy dont like this outcome. Please give me your thoughts what can be done.

We always had KM and were very satisfied with quality and service but now we are unsure if this will br the case.

Best regards,

 

[Puch]

I can second blazschmidt's observations, there are minor but very annoying problems with the KM C1085. It's a well-built solid machine, but if you're after print quality, the KM C1060 beats it easily. Our main problem is the trail edge bleeding, which is unsolvable (this is what the tech says) due to the composition of the toner. We had some customers who complained hard about the gradients 'created' in flat tones and type.

On the other hand, watch out for the 'halo' issue on the Ricoh. We dropped Ricoh because of that: put a 0-100-100-0 CMYK dot (diameter: 15 mm) onto a 20-0-0-0 CMYK tone. Run it through the printer and take close look around the red dot. We've seen white auras in the range of 0.3-0.5 mm.

 

[blazschmidt]

Hello,

What about trapping? How do you solve this problem? Do you use EFI and auto trapping option which is much more sophisticated than in Hikari (KM rip)?

Best regards,

 

[Puch]

We haven't seen many color registration problems, only on very fine type. In these cases we used the EFI rip's trapping with great success. In one special case we had to trap the design manually in Illustrator, like in the old days.

 

[blazschmidt]

Hello, Now we have changed our rip to EFI and it is much better print quality.

I have a question for all KM C1085/C1100 users.

What is your color calibration workflow. I have a problem because in our country service guys are not so well trained regarding color management.

Our workflow is like this - we do this about once per week (please share yours):

- We reset max density and gamma offset settings
- We execute gamma auto adj. and color registration adj.
- We put inside Color copy 100g paper and make auto gamma adjustment with RU
- We test gamma adjustment with color care test - if OK we proceed
- Here we have problem - We don't know how to properly do the max density adjustment - we put KM paper inside and make Auto max density adjustment with RU - but in color care Max density we are in the red - we don't get correct result.
- Then we proceed with EFI calibration of rip.

A lot of times we don't get consistent color when we do this procedure. (Maye we are doing something wrong) so If we would like to get right color we need to make ICC profile with color care and copy it into EFI which we use as output profile.

If I make quality control proof in Colorcare I am in Red (We also have another KM C1060 - the same problem)

Can you share your workflow. Please tell also how often you do this procedures. We would really like to know how to set right max density but I am waiting for few months and nothing happened.

My point of view is: If we had our engine in place we would never need to make another new ICC profile for same paper we use.

We use EFI ES-1000 spectrometer. Before we didn't had colorcare KM sales always told me that I need to buy ColorCare. When I bought it nobody in our country knows how to use it


Please help me if you can because I would like to get to bottom to this issue.

Best regards,

 

[Puch]

If the two machines of you (1060 & 1085) both produce unacceptable color then there is a big problem with your technicians. In our practice the initial setup (which wasn't a too circumvent process) produced spot-on results. Almost proof quality, certainly in the green on a validation print. The canned profiles coming with EFI cover 95 percent of the engine's capability. If you need that last 5 percent, then you have to tinker with ColorCare.

As you might already realized, the proper calibration/profiling of a KM engine is not a straightforward process. I would say that it is impossible to perform without a suitable scanning spectro like the Xrite iSiS XL or the Konica FD-9. Otherwise the measurement errors and the color variations across the sheet will eventually set you back to the 95 percent level of quality.

We don't use the RU measuring unit at all, just the supplied ES-2000. We calibrate for each paper once in a week. For very demanding jobs I created custom paper/screen profiles with ColorCare, just to see how good the default profiles are.

 

[blazschmidt]

No Title

Hello,

Thank you for your answer.

You are correct that it is not straightforward process.

Would you be so kind and please write me your workflow with engine calibration to see what are we doing wrong. Its hard because I am confused because I have too much information and don't know what is right one.

Do you thing ES-1000 is not sufficient tool if we want good quality?

P.s. We are using KM for 5 years and never had such problems. This started when we bought C1100. Mostly because there are not a lot of these machines in our country so technicians don't have know how for this machine. So basically we need to find right workflow which will work.

Can you please check out your target Max densities because I think technicians put in wrong ones (In the manual which we got there are different target densities) I am attaching screenshot.

Best regards,

 

[blazschmidt]

Hello Guys

I have one question. If you are doing a lot of jobs per day. How often do you need to calibration your KM with EFI if you want to have correct colors.

Best regards,

 

[Puch]

Our C1085 is very stable colourwise. We calibrate once a week for the used paper/screen combos. If there is a very demanding job (or a picky customer) we do it right before the job.

That said, we don't see big colour shifts before/after calibration. A trained eye can see the result of the calibration on a gray wedge, but it's impossible to pinpoint on real-world jobs, especially for an ordinary customer. I think KM solved this issue very well in case of the C1085.

 

[blazschmidt]

Do you have Q cone solved (constant temperature and humidity) in print room.

If we want to keep right color through the day we must calibrate machine at least 2 times per day.

We print a lot of demanding items (like business cards, catalogues, stationaries, corporate products) so we need to be spot on color every time.

I would like to find the cause for this unstability. Or is the problem in our high demanding products.

Best regards,

 

[Puch]

We tried to implement a very tight control of humidity and temperature, just to find out that theese factors don't mean that much. I consider the Q target sheet as a leverage for KM. I've seen machines working properly in very unfair conditions, especially in Asia. You can bet that in Africa – where most of the used Xeroxes and KMs go – they simply don't have the means to build a controlled room, yet digital printing is booming.

As far as the temperature is between 20-30 Celsius and the humidity is between 30-80 percent, we see no problems at all.

Two calibrations per day (for a given a paper/screen) is a lot, I'm sure you have a major problem with the machine's internal calibration routines.