Konica C8000 review and Please HELP!!!!

[csudman]

Update AGAIN. Let me state that this has been a roller coaster. Obviously we've had our issues. Today I can say that we are happy again with Konica and our c8000. Follow this link for my most recent update.



Ok, so I've avoided posting about our machine till it was fully "broke in" and we had some volume on it.

We've had our c8000 for about 7 months now. Have about 480k on it at this point. Went with a 5 year lease because this machine was our of our reach on a 3 year(which is what we normaly do) but because of the capabilites of this machine we felt it could last us 5 years.

1st the positives....When its on, its on.

I have printed several pieces that could be passed for offset easly.
​

Paper weights are great. I've realiable duplexed 130# Cover(351 gsm) with no issues. I'm simplexed 160# Cover(461 gsm) in short runs with no problems.​

Regisration can be great(read the negitives for more)​

Sheet to sheet color is great. If the run isn't to long. (read the negitives for more)​

Negitives....When its off, its off.

Since day one we have had skew issues. Some stocks (100 cougar) are more noticable than others, buts its allways there to some degree. I know that digital machines are not presses, athough this on has press written on the front if it. Sometimes one side of the sheet is straight and the duplex side is not. That said, having learned alot on this forum, we are not working with the loop adjustment on the paper profile level. Our techs never taught us that.​

Streaking, its hit and miss. Sometimes the sheet looks untouched, sometimes it looks like an exgirlfriend keyed it. A call to service fixes most of it, but its rarely ever perfect.​

Color consistancy. If your running heavy coverage, Anything more than a few 1000 and you start to get toner build up in corona wires and magenta, yellow or cyan streaks from the drums or somewhere else.​

Registration. Oh boy. When its working well, we get about 1 mil movement on a 13x19 sheet. Its more than I would like, but managable. When its off, we see 1-3 mil bounces. We are profiling all stocks and STILL having to reset front/back adjustments every day. The dam machine will not stay in one place.​

Error codes - Almost daily we see a code that requires restart. Some days the same code multiple times. They haven't been able to sort out and fix this issue.​

All this said, the reason I'm posting today is for an issue our techs can't figure out. Right now they are trying to find an engineer to come to our shop and figure it out.

We have a RANDOM 3 mil image shift on the duplex side of our prints. Here are some examples of when and how it shows up.

I can have a perfectly mechanicly centered tray, perfecly aligned both sides adjustment and print a job that cascades trays. When changing from tray 4 to 5 on a run, I have seen the shift show up.

I can be running a 13x19 duplex postcard job, again, perfectly aligned trays, and have a jam. Clear the jam, and the image has moved 3 mil. (I can force a jam by opening a door and make this happen on demand.)

Today, I was working on our Calenders that we print and give to customers. 12 sigs duplexed. I printed 1 calender. ONE! the first 10 sigs were perfect, the last 2 moved 3 mil on the duplex side.

So, oh great Printplanet.com. Can you help me?

Thanks
CJ

 

[KMBS]

I can help!

I can help!

Hello CJ,
I am sorry to hear about the issues you are experiencing with your C8000.

I work for KMBS technical support and would like to assist you with the problems you have been having. Is your C8000 serviced by KMBS or a dealer? Also, if you can provide your serial number I can review your service history (if KMBS services it).

Most of the issues you have reported can be corrected. After I review your service records I can contact your service provider directly to make sure these corrections are made.

Best Regards,
-Clint

 

[csudman]

Hello CJ,
I am sorry to hear about the issues you are experiencing with your C8000.

I work for KMBS technical support and would like to assist you with the problems you have been having. Is your C8000 serviced by KMBS or a dealer? Also, if you can provide your serial number I can review your service history (if KMBS services it).

Most of the issues you have reported can be corrected. After I review your service records I can contact your service provider directly to make sure these corrections are made.

Best Regards,
-Clint

My 8000 is KM serviced. They are working on it(were here all day today). We have an engineer scheduled for Tuesday next week. Hopefully that will be the end to our shifting problems.

I posted this looking for suggestions from other users. Not quite cool with putting serial numbers on the web.

Thanks
CJ

 

[richwitney]

Hi csudman,

We've had our C8000 since early October, and it's been running very well.

I've only noticed 1 job where the image on the back of the sheet has shifted - I'm hoping this is a one off but after reading your post I'll be checking everything very carefully.

We have a tiny bit of skew in 1 corner of the sheet - probably only 0.5mm, and only on the heavier stocks. As the middle of the sheet tends to be spot on (or 0.25mm out max) I'm more than happy with this. On some jobs on the lighter stocks (ie 170gsm Silk coated) the front to back has been spot on)

Streaking - on dark heavy colours I can see 1 roller mark, but that's it.

Long runs of colour - I've heard this before, but haven't seen it yet. Maybe time will tell.

As for the Error codes, we've had 2 call outs in just over 200k impressions - whilst I'm not expecting it to stay like this, its certainly encouraging.

Overall, it sounds like you may have a bit of a 'lemon' - I'm sure it's something that can be fixed by the techs, but I guess each machine is different, as well as each install. Maybe we have just been lucky, but for us the C8000 been a dream so far :crossesfingers:

Keep us to date with your experiences!

 

[arossetti]

Is that 480k small and large clicks or just small?

 

[csudman]

Is that 480k small and large clicks or just small?

95% is 11x17 or larger.

 

[KopyBoss]

We have been running our C8000 for about 3 months now and have a little over 400k on it.
For the most part the machine has been great. If your techs cannot fix the machine I would request a new one, sounds like you got a lemon. Tell them to fix it or pull it out I would not pay for a machine that is down everyday.

 

[csudman]

We have been running our C8000 for about 3 months now and have a little over 400k on it.
For the most part the machine has been great. If your techs cannot fix the machine I would request a new one, sounds like you got a lemon. Tell them to fix it or pull it out I would not pay for a machine that is down everyday.

we are hoping it doesn't come to that. I know it can be a great machine. hopefully next week.

 

[JayDA]

I have almost 3 million Large clicks on two machines in just under a year, and I'm installing two more next week. We had some registration issues at first, most were solved by taking the time to profile stocks,. But that said....We run the same 10 substrates the majority of the time, so we are familliar with the idiosyncracies of each. When we got our first machine, we had some problems with color consistency, and KMBS made it right. Ask them to send you the heavy hitters, they have an amazing amount of resources at their disposal, just keep bitching until they make it right .

 

[csudman]

Well, its time for an update. Had a guru fly in from Texas on Tuesday. They spent the next day and a half trying to fix the issue. They replaced several boards, glued a penny on to an actuator to make more contact when closing the duplex module. Realigned the ADU. We think it is gone, but the problem hasn't happened all week. I am putting about 80,000 large clicks on in the next week so we are monitoring it.

That said, we have a new issue. I can get a within +- .01 mil duplexed sheet using both sides consistently over 20 sheets. Print a duplexed front edge adjustment and its correct, again printing 20 sheets. I can print a duplexed file from impose w/ marks and the image is 2 mil out over my run. I’m lost as to how this is possible? And so is KM. We are thinking Fiery communication with the machine possibly, but the fiery expert basically says that the fiery sends the image once to the machine and it just repeats it. Which makes it sound like it’s a machine issue. BUT, with the machine printing perfect test charts, it doesn’t seem like a machine issue.

The fiery expert is coming in next week with our local technician again.

To be clear, KM probably fixed the initial 3mil shift. I am watching for it and have not seen it. So that is great. But, I think we have created a new issue. I am hoping this is solved quickly next week as I have tight registration jobs stacking up. (KM offered me the option of running on their demo machine which is great, just inconvenient)

I will update again next week. If anyone has any ideas on the current issue would appreciate it.

CJ

 

[csudman]

Thanks. ill look at that tomorrow.

 

[csudman]

Ok, time for an update. After replacing several boards, sensors, and the main cable between the Fiery and the c8000. We are up and running again.

I will say, our tech was here pretty much everyday until this was fixed. I am hopeful that this is the end of the issue and we can return the reason we bought this machine. Value, reliability and quality.

As things progress down the road I'll update periodically.

Thanks for the suggestions that were given.

 

[ColorKeyOp]

I've attached a pdf of an alignment target you can use to set both sides up using a job coming from the RIP that should be able to help you get it dialed in to get your job out, but obviously won't solve the core issue.

This alignment target is off. Look carefully at the lower horizontal line. It's slightly different from page to page.

 

[jpnunes]

C8000 Issues

C8000 Issues

Hi. I am a Digital Printer for a company in Ireland. I have two KM C8000 installed for about 6 months now. Using a CREO RIP. We have not had 5 days in a row without having to call service for one thing or another. All the issues I have read here, I have had them all, and some other ones too. Each of my machines have over 350K prints each on SRA3 size. Skewing, stretching, Registration problems, the lot.
I have worked for over 10 years in Printing most of witch I have worked with Indigo 5000, on witch I have done over 18 million imprints. In five years with Indigo I think I saw the Engineers twice a year tops, with this KM I see them every week, twice a week sometimes.
I don't believe this machines are ready for the Work. If anyone sees a way of getting this machines working properly please do let me know, because we completely lost our faith on them, and it's my believe that sooner or later the boss is going to get them out and go to a different machine.

 

[lfelton]

Hi. I am a Digital Printer for a company in Ireland. I have two KM C8000 installed for about 6 months now. Using a CREO RIP. We have not had 5 days in a row without having to call service for one thing or another. All the issues I have read here, I have had them all, and some other ones too. Each of my machines have over 350K prints each on SRA3 size. Skewing, stretching, Registration problems, the lot.
I have worked for over 10 years in Printing most of witch I have worked with Indigo 5000, on witch I have done over 18 million imprints. In five years with Indigo I think I saw the Engineers twice a year tops, with this KM I see them every week, twice a week sometimes.
I don't believe this machines are ready for the Work. If anyone sees a way of getting this machines working properly please do let me know, because we completely lost our faith on them, and it's my believe that sooner or later the boss is going to get them out and go to a different machine.

That's bad news and I hope it gets sorted quickly for you. I wonder whether some of this might be down to poor training of the service techs and machine operators? I've hired a couple of Indigo operators and feel that the standard of manufacturer training they went through (I can't comment on the HP engineers, although I was one once so am sure that they were excellent!) was superior to other digital press vendors. Having said that, we run KM colour machines very hard and both my ex indigo operators say that they prefer running them to Indigos, so I guess experiences vary. We do run our KMs hard, so they need PMing about every 2 weeks but I understand that even 4-6 hours downtime for planned engineer maintenance is far less than the indigos (5000s and 5500s) needed.

 

[KopyBoss]

We have had our C8000 for about three months and so far no problems the machine runs great we have put over 400k on it so far we run mostly 14pt and 10.7mil polyester stock. We profiled the stocks they we run the most and keep the machine calibrated. We use the expert color adjustment to set up our screens, print gamma & stabilization. The 8000 is not like the 6500's you need a operator that knows what he or she is doing to get the most from this machine.

 

[Toner4Brains]

Hi. I am a Digital Printer for a company in Ireland. I have two KM C8000 installed for about 6 months now. Using a CREO RIP. We have not had 5 days in a row without having to call service for one thing or another. All the issues I have read here, I have had them all, and some other ones too. Each of my machines have over 350K prints each on SRA3 size. Skewing, stretching, Registration problems, the lot.
I have worked for over 10 years in Printing most of witch I have worked with Indigo 5000, on witch I have done over 18 million imprints. In five years with Indigo I think I saw the Engineers twice a year tops, with this KM I see them every week, twice a week sometimes.
I don't believe this machines are ready for the Work. If anyone sees a way of getting this machines working properly please do let me know, because we completely lost our faith on them, and it's my believe that sooner or later the boss is going to get them out and go to a different machine.

I'm not sure exactly where you are geographically and whether the maintenance plans are the same as they are in the US (I assume you're not in the US by the SRA3 reference), but if all is equal it's not really a fair parallel you're drawing based on the differences in how a C8000 vs. an Indigo are set up on maintenance. I apologize in advance because this really isn't a solution to your problem but I'd like to clarify it for anyone who follows up on this post.

If you had, say an Indigo 3050, your operators are doing between 1 and 2 hours of maintenance a day on the engine and the only time you see a service engineer is for MAJOR break/fix. On the KM gear (unless you're enrolled in the ORU Maintenance program which would depend on where you are and if it's been rolled out there yet), the KM engineers are performing 100% of the maintenance. So to see your KM service engineer more than your Indigo engineer should have been an expectation, and still does not necessarily equate to more maintenance being done it just means an engineer is performing more of it.

 

[ColorKeyOp]

Shouldn't be, or at least it's not when I look at it. If I open it in photoshop and drop 0.5" guides on each edge they all line up on them. Same goes for creating a 0.5" trim box in acrobat. I attached a screen shot of the file in acrobat with a 0.5" trim box overlapping the image - if yours is different I'm not sure what is going on with it.

Weird. I took page one of your PDF and overlayed page 2 on top of it in InDesign, drew guides and re-exported. Look at the red lines in the lower left at 400% or so magnification. You can see the horizontal hash marks don't line up, and the stroke width is different from page 1 to page 2. Zoom in really tight.

Print Planet's upload tool isn't working for me, so the file is hosted here:
RegShot.pdf

 

[Bob Ruscoe]

registration and skewing

registration and skewing

In the process of looking at production printers to replace a DC5000 in 2012.

At one point we were running an Indigo 1050, a DC5000 and a KM 8050.

Indigo absolutely no problem with registration or skewing.
DC5000 with careful ajustment we got perfectly acceptable registration and no skewing.
KM8050 No matter how much time we spent going through the alignment routines for duplex printing we were never able to get acceptable registration. Reading your comments it would seem that registration is still an issue on KM machines.
Recently went to a demonstration of the new MGI press which I know uses the KM engine, the registration was not an issue. I'd be interested to know what modifications MGI are incorporating in their total rebuild to eliminate the problem.

Bob

 

[lfelton]

In the process of looking at production printers to replace a DC5000 in 2012.

At one point we were running an Indigo 1050, a DC5000 and a KM 8050.

Indigo absolutely no problem with registration or skewing.
DC5000 with careful ajustment we got perfectly acceptable registration and no skewing.
KM8050 No matter how much time we spent going through the alignment routines for duplex printing we were never able to get acceptable registration. Reading your comments it would seem that registration is still an issue on KM machines.
Recently went to a demonstration of the new MGI press which I know uses the KM engine, the registration was not an issue. I'd be interested to know what modifications MGI are incorporating in their total rebuild to eliminate the problem.

Bob

Bob - if you're asking a question, it's better to start your own thread rather than hijacking an existing one. IMO replacing a DC5000 you should be looking at a Xerox 700/770 (or 8080 if you want a similar machine to the 5000), a KM6000/7000, a Ricoh 751 and a Canon 6010.

If you're trying to help the OP, then I fail to see how comparing a KM photocopier/printer from nearly a decade ago with KM's flagship digital colour press is relevant. The technology is completely different I'm afraid.