Konica 6120 quick question...

[TicketsandBadges.com]

Hey guys, I have a 3070 and 2 3080's in my shop. Off contract for years and loving it. I run (on my third) a KM 951 for B&W basic stuff. I tend to get about 3-4 million clicks on the 951's before they start requiring too much attention. My current 951 is at 3.3 million clicks and I've been offered a great deal on a low mileage (250k) KM 6120 and am looking like I'll take it.

First question is anything negative I need to know about 6120's? I'm assuming it'll be a fine upgrade.

2nd question is I see the 7120 / 7136 is rated to run coated stock. I've seached but can not see where the 6120 does or doesn't. That info isn't published anywhere. I see the 6120 comes with a relay unit so I'm Ass-uming the 6120 does as well? That would be nice as the 951's are uncoated only and I'd welcome being able to run coated on the 6120.

Thanks in advance!

Chris Barton

Edit: Ok while seaching here I found a comment stating that yes, the 6120 is rated for coated stock. Good news. I guess now my only question is, is are you users of 6120's happy with your machines and are they any issues I should be aware of?

 

[jwheeler]

We have 3 of the 6136's which is the same engine, just 136ppm instead of 120ppm. If you've been happy with the 951, you'll be fine with these. We find that most of the issues are related to finishing options...especially the perfect binders which can be finicky. Other than that, the engines are pretty reliable and the vacuum feed paper decks are awesome. Definitely get those instead of the friction fed option.

Between our engines we have the perfect binders on 2 of them, the GBC punch on 1 of them, and the FD, FS-532, and SD-510 on all 3.

 

[TicketsandBadges.com]

We have 3 of the 6136's which is the same engine, just 136ppm instead of 120ppm. If you've been happy with the 951, you'll be fine with these. We find that most of the issues are related to finishing options...especially the perfect binders which can be finicky. Other than that, the engines are pretty reliable and the vacuum feed paper decks are awesome. Definitely get those instead of the friction fed option.

Between our engines we have the perfect binders on 2 of them, the GBC punch on 1 of them, and the FD, FS-532, and SD-510 on all 3.

Thanks for that, yes, I've been mostly happy with the 951, I'm hoping that the 6120 will have blacker blacks ..... hoping it's more comparable to when I run B&W on my color machines but that may be asking for too much lol

 

[jwheeler]

The blacks will be pretty much the same between the 951 and 6120. I used to sell KM production gear and I had a 951 and 1250 in my demo room. The output was nearly identical between the two. The big upgrade of going to the 1250 was the speed, vacuum feed trays, it's ability to print on coated stocks, and that it could connect with every finisher KM has available. When the 1250 was replaced with the 6120/6136 series, the imaging technology didn't change much. Most of the upgrades were to the software/interface, and some mechanical components (such as gears) were replaced with more reliable components, and you could now get a Fiery controller.

When our 6136's have been fully serviced, the blacks are nice and solid, but they do tend to fade as parts/developer wear out. We are mostly printing manuals with text, so we don't see a lot of big solid black areas. But when we do get a job with them, we sometimes have to switch from one 6136 to another that has had a more recent PM to get the best black. In my experience, the black on color machines is always a richer black than on monochrome printers.

 

[TicketsandBadges.com]

Yeah, the blacks are always best on a color machine. And yes, it has always been like I'm chasing darker blacks on the 951.... have a maint. and they look pretty good. And then kinda grey out a little as I put the clicks on it. Any kind of a solid tho is usually not impressive and I end up wishing it was nicer or I end up putting it on a color machine. Oh well, regardless I'll pull the trigger on this one. It's a solid deal and a low number machine. Ought to get me thru the next 3 years if the past is any indication. lol

Thanks for the comments!

 

[The Copy Guys]

You can try to make darker blacks by turning the default density down a click or 2. It's found in service mode under Process-->Drum peculiarity-->default density.

 

[criccidisk]

We had a 6120 for three years and ran the snot out of it. It's a super reliable machine, kicked the snot out of the Ricoh 8120 we had prior to it.

Only major quality issues we encountered were that:
* Our lightweight stocks (60# Husky, 24# Navigator, 20# Report) reaaaally liked to develop a ripple perpendicular to the paper path once printed. Most likely humidity related, but it rarely impacted our color KM devices on the same media.
* After running NCR, we'd develop super random streaks on other jobs until a technician gave the machine a solid cleaning.
* The orange fusing roller picked the worst times to shred into a million pieces. Our techs would usually just stick two or three on our shelves during busy seasons.

We're onto the KM 6136 now, which is essentially the same machine with a slightly tuned up engine!

 

[jwheeler]

We had a 6120 for three years and ran the snot out of it. It's a super reliable machine, kicked the snot out of the Ricoh 8120 we had prior to it.

Only major quality issues we encountered were that:
* Our lightweight stocks (60# Husky, 24# Navigator, 20# Report) reaaaally liked to develop a ripple perpendicular to the paper path once printed. Most likely humidity related, but it rarely impacted our color KM devices on the same media.
* After running NCR, we'd develop super random streaks on other jobs until a technician gave the machine a solid cleaning.
* The orange fusing roller picked the worst times to shred into a million pieces. Our techs would usually just stick two or three on our shelves during busy seasons.

We're onto the KM 6136 now, which is essentially the same machine with a slightly tuned up engine!

@criccidisk : Regarding the Ricoh 8120, what is so much better about the KM compared to it? What were the issues with the Ricoh? We have been thinking of switching to Ricoh for all of our gear in the next year or two. Everyone on PrintPlanet speaks highly of the color gear, but I don't see much about their BW gear. What finishing attachments did you have? We're curious how reliable the in-line perfect binder is because we use that quite often on our KM's.

Regarding the NCR, we have the same issue which is why we invested in some digital duplicators. We now run all 1-sided NCR work on those, and only run 2-sided NCR on our KM 6136's. We run about 125,000 impressions per month of 1-sided NCR.

We've had the same issue with our orange roller in the fuser, though our techs aren't as good about keeping spares here.

 

[criccidisk]

@criccidisk : Regarding the Ricoh 8120, what is so much better about the KM compared to it? What were the issues with the Ricoh? We have been thinking of switching to Ricoh for all of our gear in the next year or two. Everyone on PrintPlanet speaks highly of the color gear, but I don't see much about their BW gear. What finishing attachments did you have? We're curious how reliable the in-line perfect binder is because we use that quite often on our KM's.

Regarding the NCR, we have the same issue which is why we invested in some digital duplicators. We now run all 1-sided NCR work on those, and only run 2-sided NCR on our KM 6136's. We run about 125,000 impressions per month of 1-sided NCR.

We've had the same issue with our orange roller in the fuser, though our techs aren't as good about keeping spares here.

Hi @jwheeler , I can't speak for any newer generation Ricohs, but the Ricoh 8120 was just outright unreliable and there weren't any technicians local to the DC area who could reliably make it run for more than a day or two at a time. And we're not really talking high volume; we've always averaged around 200k - 250k clicks a month on our black-and-white units.

It would jam at the sight of color media in its drawers, would generally fault out for seemingly no reason at all, and was veeeeery unreliable registration-wise. Plus, none of the techs knew how to work on the Plockmatic or other accessories (e.g. the GBC hole puncher) attached to it. Probably its only benefit was being able to run 13" x 19" stock.

I can't speak for any perfect binding accessories since I perform those tasks offline.