Konica Minolta c8000

[rtesta]

Have you all checked out the new Xerox 770 or 8080?
The 770 now competes closer to the KM C8000 and Ricoh C901.

Just figured I'd throw that out there...

 

[bantonm]

3 x c8000

3 x c8000

We run 3 x c8000 presses that were installed in March 2011. Previous to that we had 3 x 6501. The new technology has allowed us to increase our volume. In regards to print quality the average person on the street could not pick that the job has been printed digital. We also have an SM52 5 col and our staff struggle on some jobs to say if has been printed offset or digital.
We are very happy with print quality and overall productivity however there have been many service issues. This is to be expected as it is new technology. KM techs and management have been fantastic in regards to correcting any faults. If purchasing now be aware there may be service issues that you will need to work through before the presses settle down so to speak.
Our issues have been
print related problems - image moving, paper jamming, scratches on sheets.
Fiery problems
Issues with drums and fusing units
Overall this is great technology and alot of press power for the investment.

 

[Pratik]

Hi,
We are using a C8000 with creo for about 4 months now. Overal pretty happy with the colours and speed when it runs properly. Have a couple of issues though and need to know if this is a machine problem worldwide or something messed up by the engineers who set the machine over here in India.

1. The density of black is a big problem. If I print a job which is 100% black on coated paper it does not come out very dense (very bad if I compare it with my C6501), but that problem is not there on uncoated stock. Also, the density worsens over the length of a job. If it is a run of about 200 prints that 100% goes to about 80%. If it is a 4 colour image or vector with a lot of black the same problem occurs over the length of the job, but this does not happen with the other colours.

2. There seems to be some problem with the IBT cleaning blade assembly. Whenever we run a large job on 100 gsm coated/uncoated paper, waste toner scratches start coming on the print say after 3k-4k prints. If we stall the machine for about 5 mins a few hundred prints come fine and then the same problem. When we removed the assembly we could see toner formations above the plastic scrapper at the same positions where we were getting the scratches.

The black density issue is really creating a lot of problems and we are loosing quite a few jobs. Can somebody recommend anything !

Thanks,
Pratik

 

[KopyBoss]

Hi,
We are using a C8000 with creo for about 4 months now. Overal pretty happy with the colours and speed when it runs properly. Have a couple of issues though and need to know if this is a machine problem worldwide or something messed up by the engineers who set the machine over here in India.

1. The density of black is a big problem. If I print a job which is 100% black on coated paper it does not come out very dense (very bad if I compare it with my C6501), but that problem is not there on uncoated stock. Also, the density worsens over the length of a job. If it is a run of about 200 prints that 100% goes to about 80%. If it is a 4 colour image or vector with a lot of black the same problem occurs over the length of the job, but this does not happen with the other colours.

2. There seems to be some problem with the IBT cleaning blade assembly. Whenever we run a large job on 100 gsm coated/uncoated paper, waste toner scratches start coming on the print say after 3k-4k prints. If we stall the machine for about 5 mins a few hundred prints come fine and then the same problem. When we removed the assembly we could see toner formations above the plastic scrapper at the same positions where we were getting the scratches.

The black density issue is really creating a lot of problems and we are loosing quite a few jobs. Can somebody recommend anything !

Thanks,
Pratik

We have been running the 8000 for about 2months and have no problem with the black density. We profile all the stock we run and the density holds on all jobs. You can profile up to 10 different stocks. We have the creo i-307 and the x-rite i7.

 

[Pratik]

KM C8000 black density problem

KM C8000 black density problem

Hi,
We tried calibrating for different stocks but the situation is still the same. Anybody has a solution for this or anybody else facing similar black density issues?

Thanks

 

[Emtri]

1. The density of black is a big problem. If I print a job which is 100% black on coated paper it does not come out very dense (very bad if I compare it with my C6501), but that problem is not there on uncoated stock. Also, the density worsens over the length of a job. If it is a run of about 200 prints that 100% goes to about 80%. If it is a 4 colour image or vector with a lot of black the same problem occurs over the length of the job, but this does not happen with the other colours.

2. There seems to be some problem with the IBT cleaning blade assembly. Whenever we run a large job on 100 gsm coated/uncoated paper, waste toner scratches start coming on the print say after 3k-4k prints. If we stall the machine for about 5 mins a few hundred prints come fine and then the same problem. When we removed the assembly we could see toner formations above the plastic scrapper at the same positions where we were getting the scratches.

1: This sounds like a service issue. I would also try adjusting how your rip handles blacks 100% black VS CMYK black can be a huge difference specially on heavy coated stocks

2: service issue for sure

 

[Pratik]

The local konica minolta engineers have changed the drums and developers and even the charging grid. The funny thing is that this is the problem since day 1. We have printed about 180,000 prints and there is no change. Even if we print a 4 colour (CMYK) black it worsens gradually across the job. Somehow the black is not maintaining the density..

Is there a setting they would have missed? or wrongly switched or something?

Thanks

 

[Emtri]

Would you be able to post a photo of a sheet? If the density issue only occurs on your gloss stock (what GSM?) I would perhaps try running the paper through at a slower speed. Its possible its a fusing issue rather then an imaging one.

as for 2. Try playing with your GSM settings (higher or lower) and see if that helps any

 

[Pratik]

1. For the black density issue, I will try and send a scanned image tomorrow itself.. Also will try running at slow speeds and update you.

As for 2. the engineer did come in and made some modification the assembly and it seems to work better for now.

Thanks

 

[printmaster8000]

There's been some problem with black density since they released the 8000...a quick fix for us was to turn use coated GL as the paper setting ..for some reason it look beautiful with that setting also if your using hot folders make sure your color setting are set correctly.

 

[SDP]

My company had a C8000 installed a couple months ago, and we need to learn more about it's features before I can say much about it. At this point though, I thought my skirt would be blown up much, much higher. I am not that impressed, especially since they've said that our isses can be remidied. Let it be known that we had a C500, and we still have a C6501. The C8000 produces nice CMYK photos. I'll give it that. Two things that irritate me the most. 1) When you set a trim size in a Virtual Printer, it will not keep that size unless your document is exactly that size. For example, let's say you have a PDF that trims at letter size, but it's overall size is bigger because it has bleed and crops. Print to the Virtual Printer, and the trim size changes to the overall size of the PDF, and I have to change it back. 2) Not one trainer or tech can tell me how to do OPI/APR using PrintShop Mail, and the C8000. I desperately need to get that in place. Can anyone here help me with those two nagging issues? Thanks!

 

[lfelton]

Just to add a little to the total sum of knowledge about the c8000. We added one to our existing 6501s at the start of the year and have mostly been impressed. Paper handling, productivity, print quality all good and in line with expectations. We have had one major issue though, that dragged on for over a week (hopefully it's fixed now). You CANNOT rely on the colour management (i.e. inline spectro). We had a hardware fault that resulted in major colour shifts within jobs and from job to job. Even though the machine was set up to auto calibrate for every job, the colour shift was not picked up on at all, it just kept on printing, no errors reported.

So, the software has a major design flaw, i.e. your colour can be all over the place and ONLY the mk1 eyeball can detect it. You can't rely on the machine to do that at all. Watch each job like a hawk (i.e. don't rely on the first copy being representative of the whole run) and stop production if you notice a shift. Luckily for us we have other machines that we can switch printing on to, as it took about 6 visits and over a week to fix.

I suspect KM is aware of this as an issue, whether it's fixable on the current generation machine I don't know.