Konica Minolta Accurio C14000

[dundi]

We are currently installing a KM Accurio C14000. Looking for some feedback on what potential problems to look out for. Experienced operators would be a preference (already got the sales pitch)

 

[dundi]

On that note, any feedback would be appreciated

 

[SoggyWinter]

Please let us know what your experience is like.

 

[Ynot_UK]

What stage are you at @dundi ?

 

[cqb1988]

I have a c12000, not the best machine that I owned, few issues that I have,

not fusing cardstock at rated speed, thin vertical lines during the print, red prints like orange no matter how we profile it, their "20 years experience color expert" told me to increst max density+3 after calibration, which makes no sense to me....

if this is the only machine you will have, I don't recommend it, but it is an ok machine to just print cheap stuff since the click rate is lower than other competitors, at least for me.

 

[SoggyWinter]

I have a c12000, not the best machine that I owned, few issues that I have,

not fusing cardstock at rated speed, thin vertical lines during the print, red prints like orange no matter how we profile it, their "20 years experience color expert" told me to increst max density+3 after calibration, which makes no sense to me....

if this is the only machine you will have, I don't recommend it, but it is an ok machine to just print cheap stuff since the click rate is lower than other competitors, at least for me.

Red might be out of gammut for KM's CMYK inkset. Can you get the red you want from another CMYK toner printer?

 

[criccidisk]

Man, I really wish I could recommend the c14000, but ours has had nothing but issues since its install last month. I say this as a happy KM user who traded in a c6100 and c4080 for a c14000 and c7100.

No matter what our techs tweak or replace and no matter how we calibrate, linearize, or profile the device, the output gamut is absolutely terrible on it. As another user pointed out, reds are orange. Every flavor of rich black comes out gray. The output is significantly less crisp than our c6100 on the same paper and files. Absolutely terrible banding on solid colors. What's funny is that even with the weak red output, calibrating from the IQ-501 somehow makes everything have a severe magenta cast compared to using our ES-3000.

Insult to injury is that the c7100 we installed alongside it has a SIGNIFICANTLY better gamut at the tradeoff of a few other quality issues.

I really want to say we're in the minority and just have a bad install, but our techs have worked miracles on our previous devices and I'm finding it hard to believe they'd have this many issues on the newer generations of machines.

I'll definitely update this post if anything changes, but I'd be lying if I could recommend the c14000.

 

[cqb1988]

Red might be out of gammut for KM's CMYK inkset. Can you get the red you want from another CMYK toner printer?

I can get nice solid red from my Ricoh. The problem with Konica is the max density is auto adjusted by the machine which is not dark enough for red, I can tweak a little bit to get better red, but it just isn't worth the time since I have other machines print well

Man, I really wish I could recommend the c14000, but ours has had nothing but issues since its install last month. I say this as a happy KM user who traded in a c6100 and c4080 for a c14000 and c7100.

No matter what our techs tweak or replace and no matter how we calibrate, linearize, or profile the device, the output gamut is absolutely terrible on it. As another user pointed out, reds are orange. Every flavor of rich black comes out gray. The output is significantly less crisp than our c6100 on the same paper and files. Absolutely terrible banding on solid colors. What's funny is that even with the weak red output, calibrating from the IQ-501 somehow makes everything have a severe magenta cast compared to using our ES-3000.

Insult to injury is that the c7100 we installed alongside it has a SIGNIFICANTLY better gamut at the tradeoff of a few other quality issues.

I really want to say we're in the minority and just have a bad install, but our techs have worked miracles on our previous devices and I'm finding it hard to believe they'd have this many issues on the newer generations of machines.

I'll definitely update this post if anything changes, but I'd be lying if I could recommend the c14000.

Does c7100 print glossy? they made c14000 print matte, so the color is not as vibrant as glossy output.. I came from c6100 to c12000 too, yes, it is a downgrade, in qualitywise, and speed too, because my machine can not fuse at 120ppm. you can get stable fusing at 140ppm?

 

[jwheeler]

Does c7100 print glossy?

Yes...in fact we have print all of our coated stock on our C7090, and we run all of our matte or uncoated jobs on the C6085.

 

[criccidisk]

I can get nice solid red from my Ricoh. The problem with Konica is the max density is auto adjusted by the machine which is not dark enough for red, I can tweak a little bit to get better red, but it just isn't worth the time since I have other machines print well

Does c7100 print glossy? they made c14000 print matte, so the color is not as vibrant as glossy output.. I came from c6100 to c12000 too, yes, it is a downgrade, in qualitywise, and speed too, because my machine can not fuse at 120ppm. you can get stable fusing at 140ppm?

I'm currently running a job on a fellow print shop's c14000 and the quality is significantly better than our output in color, density, and resolution. This leads me to believe we have a lemon machine or a bad install.

Regarding speed, this 12" x 18" project on 70lb Cougar Text is running at about 74ppm, which is inline with what I'd expect from a 140ppm rated machine. No fusing issues to report from uncoated or coated stock.

Ours exhibits similar Max Density auto adjustment problems and it's quite aggravating. I'd definitely get ahold of your Konica rep about it since this could be a bad lot of machines as well. One quick fix that has gotten us about 70% operational is under your paper expert settings, setting "Dens Adj Per Tray" to +2 or +3. For whatever reason, that seems to provide the reinforcements that the Max Density Adjustment fails with. It's still a bandage however.

 

[cqb1988]

"Dens Adj Per Tray" to +2 or +3.

yes, this is what they told me to do, I could get better red, but M cast on halftone.
they made some improvements after the 100th machine, different drums, if your serial no. is before AC0D011000100 , then we are in the same boat.

 

[Make_It_So]

We are currently installing a KM Accurio C14000. Looking for some feedback on what potential problems to look out for. Experienced operators would be a preference (already got the sales pitch)

Greetings,

I am biased because of my experience with Konica so keep that in mind. I created an account here only to warn you about going with Konica. I have never worked at a place that liked working with them. The techs were always there or on their way. I have both a C6100 and C14000 and they are always going down. They are both down right now as I type this. Getting a tech here in a timely manner has also been a challenge. The 6100 and the 14k are so vastly different in color reproduction, I can't move an order between them when one machine is down. I don't expect them to be dead on but ballpark. They are playing two different sports. The 6100 is almost too saturated and the 14k is too muted. The tech has no idea what to do.

I REALLY wanted these things to work but for my experience they do not. I have an operator on the verge of quitting because all he wants to do is produce and he can't. We are always behind because of the down time. Beware.

 

[dundi]

Thanks to all for the valuable input. We start training today so I will be sure to be on the look out for some of the issues you mention, especially the problems with reds. I'll be sure to post an update in the near future.

 

[Make_It_So]

Thanks to all for the valuable input. We start training today so I will be sure to be on the look out for some of the issues you mention, especially the problems with reds. I'll be sure to post an update in the near future.

I 100% hope your experience is nothing but pleasant. Someone has to buck the trend. May as well be you!

 

[dundi]

Quick update...while we are still technically in training mode (still waiting on training for the finishing features) we are able to print simple one and two sided jobs. With that being said, we are already re-doing a job that printed on 130# C1s card stock. Seems there were some fusing issues especially in areas where the black was fairly heavy. Not certain if it is a paper issue, press issue, or a combination of the two. We are now in diagnostic mode (which means there are 8 people trying to solve this but 6 of them should be doing something else). More updates to come.

 

[criccidisk]

Hello Folks. We've had a C14000 for about 5 months now. As mentioned in previous posts I was suffering "orangey" reds. Tech guy said if the machine passes ISO standards "that's the red you're going to get." "Not good enough" says I !! Yesterday was my last training day and the trainer took me through calibration again, but in more detail. Firstly before paper profiling and calibration YOU MUST CREATE A COLOUR TARGET FOR YOUR STOCK AND ASSOCIATE YOUR STOCK WITH THE COLOUR TARGET. You'll be wasting your time otherwise. I was never shown this during previous training sessions.
I'm now printing red reds like I used to on our iGen. Trust me, these machines will print red reds.

When you refer to a color target, are you referring to the Max Density Initial Adjustment setting from the service side of the machine? It looked like our initial density-max targets were REALLY low and goofy by default, so we did bump them up on the service end which helped give us some of the density we were aiming for. Honestly I think I need to bump it up even more...

Admittedly, KM still needs to revisit our machine in a few weeks since a retrofit kit is coming out for the older c12000's and c14000's to resolve some of their goofier issues. Fingers crossed it helps prevent all the fun banding and shadowing we're getting on solid printouts...

 

[Ynot_UK]

I thought the IQ-501 was mandatory on the C14000. It is according to the configurator, certainly the EU version.

 

[criccidisk]

Hi. Have you made any progress with your orangey red ?

Hi Charlie! So KM is actually coming out next week to completely rebuild the inside of our c14000, so I'm withholding judgment until they finish up that portion of the process. I have been able to force out a more true red of the machine with our current configuration, but density as a whole is still problematic, especially on uncoated paper. I'm hoping whatever retrofit parts they toss into the unit bring it up to its true potential!

 

[criccidisk]

Did you see my rather long winded explanation about how to print a red red ? You’ll possibly find your using (unknowingly) default Japanese colour targets that are nowhere near what’s required.

I did! Thank you so much for your explanation. I'll definitely be following this information once we get all the internal bugs worked out of the engine next week.

 

[criccidisk]

Sooooo, I promised I'd update folks on our shop's c14000 adventures. The great news is that we've made incredibly great progress on making this device reproduce truer to our c6100. And honestly, one week after its repair from Konica-Minolta's higher-ups, it's doing pretty darn good.

In case anyone else with a problematic c14000 is out there, here are some of the repairs we made:

• As @cqb1988 mentioned, the first lot of c14000's utilize older internal components. In our situation, this lead to incredibly jarring streaking and banding, especially in the solid regions of prints. There is a retrofit kit newly available from Konica-Minolta that swaps out a bunch of motors and other internal gadgets to help correct this problem.
• As @Charlieapps mentioned, the default color density data inside the device is garbage. This was leading to all of our prints being washed out, ESPECIALLY on "Plain"/uncoated stock. Plus the totally-trademarkable "tomato soup red" appearance on prints. There was a recent service bulletin published by KM that technicians can follow to help rectify this. In our situation (and very similar to Charlieapps' previous advice), from the service end, we set up a house coated gloss text stock (100lb Explorer gloss text) as our reference point. The target maximum densities we programmed for all other linearizations are: 1.14y / 1.61m / 1.69c / 1.99k
• The user-side of the machine's Package Color Adjust can calibrate the default KM Coated/KM Uncoated color output profiles inside the Fiery, but apparently there is a glitch in some models of the c14000 that prevents the Fiery output profiles from properly registering the maximum density data to the profile. To correct that, we were instructed by KM to avoid using the Fiery KM Coated/Uncoated profiles and instead create our own calibrations/output profiles using Color Profiler Suite. We then rely on the Package Color Adjustments inside the KM engine to only linearize the device without controller calibrations.

I'm sure there are other fixes that found their way into the unit outside of these three bullet points, but after their implementation, we're having a night and day difference in our output quality. To correct my answer to the initial question: if the above steps are followed, I would recommend the KM c14000 to prospective digital press purchasers. I would just recommend printing out some sample prints from your existing devices to hold as a gold standard next to the output from the c14000 when it's being set up.

P.S. And @jwheeler , there is a firmware update coming in several months to correct the color misregistration and color shifting we've both experienced on the c7100. Why this is a problem to begin with...I'm not sure, but hey at least they're trying.