Konica vs Xerox?

[gazfocus]

Just for curiosity more than anything…

Out of these two manufacturers, which do you prefer? Thinking of the Konica C4080/Versant 280 kind of product range rather than the higher end models.

 

[Mike the Print Man]

I've worked with an older KM 3080 model and currently work with a Versant 280. I'd take the Konica in a heartbeat. Our Versant does not have great front/back registration and occasionally the colors drift a bit. Just my opinion, I know there are folks who swear by Xerox.

 

[gazfocus]

I've worked with an older KM 3080 model and currently work with a Versant 280. I'd take the Konica in a heartbeat. Our Versant does not have great front/back registration and occasionally the colors drift a bit. Just my opinion, I know there are folks who swear by Xerox.

Interesting. I’ve not done any critical double sided stuff on our Versant 80 but when I’ve done the SIQA adjustments it’s been bang on when it’s finished. In comparison, our KM3070 is a lot more manual in doing the front to back registration.

The main issue I have with the Xerox is prints on heavier stocks are often slightly wonky. I also feel I know my way around the KM3070 better than the Xerox.

One of the reasons I asked the question is that I’m considering selling our Konica and just sticking with our Versant 80 then buying another Xerox (possible a Versant 180 or 3100) after Christmas….but I do love our Konica

 

[gazfocus]

I've worked with an older KM 3080 model and currently work with a Versant 280. I'd take the Konica in a heartbeat. Our Versant does not have great front/back registration and occasionally the colors drift a bit. Just my opinion, I know there are folks who swear by Xerox.

Just relooking at this, as once again our Versant 80 has required a service call...apparently because we are not using it enough.

I really need to make a decision as to whether to sell our Konica C3070 and run the Versant 80 til we buy another machine or sell the Versant 80 and keep the Konica (though the Xerox has a much lower resell value).

 

[jwheeler]

our KM3070 is a lot more manual in doing the front to back registration.

Did you get the IQ-501? That unit is like the SIQA on the Xerox where it will automatically adjust for registration. We have it on our KM C7090 and C6085 and it's spot on after auto-measuring 1 sample sheet.

As for your dilemma, I don't have firsthand experience with the Xerox, so I can't suggest one over the other. However, if they're both working well enough for you, consider keeping them both and enjoy not having a lease payment for a while! Those are both fairly recent models, and the upgrades on the newer models are not significant enough to warrant new machines. I'm sure they'll start playing games with you on the service rates, but even a higher CPC may still be less $$ than a lease payment depending on your volume.

 

[Ynot_UK]

The Versant 80 was launched seven and a half years ago, whereas the KM C3070 technology is at least two years newer. I don't follow Xerox so am unsure of the machine evolution since then, however KM replaced the C3070 with the C4070/4080 in late 2020 and many of the parts and consumables in the current generation C4xx series are the same as the predecessor.

@gazfocus certainly our side of the pond, you'll find more people who can work on KM kit than Xerox and I'd wager going forward a few years, parts and consumables for the C3070 may be easier to come by than for the aged Xerox.

Neither manufacturer has a clean record so to speak, Xerox had the well documented drum issues, whereas KM had the toner availability issues following that factory fire.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

The Versant 80 was launched seven and a half years ago, whereas the KM C3070 technology is at least two years newer. I don't follow Xerox so am unsure of the machine evolution since then, however KM replaced the C3070 with the C4070/4080 in late 2020 and many of the parts and consumables in the current generation C4xx series are the same as the predecessor.

@gazfocus certainly our side of the pond, you'll find more people who can work on KM kit than Xerox and I'd wager going forward a few years, parts and consumables for the C3070 may be easier to come by than for the aged Xerox.

Neither manufacturer has a clean record so to speak, Xerox had the well documented drum issues, whereas KM had the toner availability issues following that factory fire.

May not be the right place to say this, but I have felt since Xerox fixed the drum and toner issues last year, we have seen our drums last an insanely long period of time, perhaps even twice as long as any other point in history with Xerox presses. I don't know if anyone keeps track of their drum use and replacement intervals, but they are incredibly reliable now.

 

[gazfocus]

Did you get the IQ-501? That unit is like the SIQA on the Xerox where it will automatically adjust for registration. We have it on our KM C7090 and C6085 and it's spot on after auto-measuring 1 sample sheet.

As for your dilemma, I don't have firsthand experience with the Xerox, so I can't suggest one over the other. However, if they're both working well enough for you, consider keeping them both and enjoy not having a lease payment for a while! Those are both fairly recent models, and the upgrades on the newer models are not significant enough to warrant new machines. I'm sure they'll start playing games with you on the service rates, but even a higher CPC may still be less $$ than a lease payment depending on your volume.

No we couldn’t justify the cost of the IQ when we bought our C3070. We paid £22k for the C3070 with three air assisted trays and a standard finisher and the IQ would have been an extra £16k.

Unfortunately, we don’t currently have the space to keep both machines otherwise I would definitely keep them both. I do like the whole not having a lease payment at the moment and would probably buy our next press outright instead of leasing again.

 

[gazfocus]

The Versant 80 was launched seven and a half years ago, whereas the KM C3070 technology is at least two years newer. I don't follow Xerox so am unsure of the machine evolution since then, however KM replaced the C3070 with the C4070/4080 in late 2020 and many of the parts and consumables in the current generation C4xx series are the same as the predecessor.

@gazfocus certainly our side of the pond, you'll find more people who can work on KM kit than Xerox and I'd wager going forward a few years, parts and consumables for the C3070 may be easier to come by than for the aged Xerox.

Neither manufacturer has a clean record so to speak, Xerox had the well documented drum issues, whereas KM had the toner availability issues following that factory fire.

Yeh, we bought our Konica brand new 5 years ago. We’ve only done <300k clicks on it as most of what we print is short run, high margin rather than high volume so it’s still a baby really. KM have said they’ll continue to service it but we are kind of at their mercy as to when they decide they no longer want to.

The Xerox, we bought 2 years ago (ish) used and while it’s under a service contract, it does seem to go wrong a lot more frequently but we’ve been told it’s because we don’t use it enough, so thinking that if we just run the one machine rather than two, it will do much better.

Back when KM had the toner shortage, we ended up with a visit from our rep to swipe any spare toner we had…since then it’s been a pain to get toner so we’ve ended up buying our own while we wait for KM to ship any. Costs us about £90 a toner so not the end of the world but still frustrating.

Our Xerox dealer have been quite good with toner and drums. They’re just not as hot on sending techs out (takes a fair amount of self diagnostics to get replacement parts and a tech on site vs Konica being within 4 hours).

The only negatives with the Xerox other than that is they are not supported to do 350gsm duplex where the KM is, and the prints come out skewed on the sheet and not figured out how to fix that yet (though not tried a lot to be honest).

 

[pippip]

Not to derail too far but how does that work when you buy your own toner?
Are you buying toner and then paying a click charge too, so effectively paying twice for toner?

 

[jwheeler]

No we couldn’t justify the cost of the IQ when we bought our C3070. We paid £22k for the C3070 with three air assisted trays and a standard finisher and the IQ would have been an extra £16k.

Unfortunately, we don’t currently have the space to keep both machines otherwise I would definitely keep them both. I do like the whole not having a lease payment at the moment and would probably buy our next press outright instead of leasing again.

I hear ya on the price for the IQ. I used to sell KM production gear and I always hated how much extra that unit cost. I felt it was like saying "Our presses work pretty good, but if you want them to work the best, ya gotta pay another $11,000 US!!!"...plus it adds another 16 inches or so to the machine length. However, it does speed up the front to back registration process as opposed to doing it manually off the scanner glass, or by using your own calculations.

As for your comment about being at their mercy of supporting it, I was told by KM management that industry regulations state that a copier vendor must service and make parts for a machine for a minimum of 7 years beyond the last year it was sold. I think they only switched from the C3070 to the C4070 about 2 years ago, so you still have plenty of years left before they can make the unit EOL (end of life). However, that C3070 was quite a popular model, so I'd imagine they will be supported well beyond that.

 

[TJPrinter]

I went from a Versant 80 to the 280 and there was a considerable improvement in front to back registration on heavier stock. I don’t have any issues with color shifting if I calibrate after it’s warmed up. I don’t run much stock over 350 gsm so I can’t say how it handles auto duplexing on anything over 350 gsm but it does fine on auto duplexing 350 gsm stock.

Running coated stock on the 280 is still an issue and the 2nd BTR will need to be replaced frequently, but it you run a mix of jobs and not too much coated stock it’s a great little machine. Unfortunately, I don’t have much confidence in where Xerox is going with the Versant line.

Since the 280 is now 3 years old your dealer should be able to locate a used one, I wouldn’t recommend upgrading from the 80 to the 180 at this point.

 

[gazfocus]

Not to derail too far but how does that work when you buy your own toner?
Are you buying toner and then paying a click charge too, so effectively paying twice for toner?

Kind of. What we do though is we keep a tally of the toners that we buy, so for example if we buy a magenta toner today, then get 3 magenta toners from KM next week, we will hold one back as our toner so when the contract ends we won't give that one back to KM.

 

[gazfocus]

I hear ya on the price for the IQ. I used to sell KM production gear and I always hated how much extra that unit cost. I felt it was like saying "Our presses work pretty good, but if you want them to work the best, ya gotta pay another $11,000 US!!!"...plus it adds another 16 inches or so to the machine length. However, it does speed up the front to back registration process as opposed to doing it manually off the scanner glass, or by using your own calculations.

As for your comment about being at their mercy of supporting it, I was told by KM management that industry regulations state that a copier vendor must service and make parts for a machine for a minimum of 7 years beyond the last year it was sold. I think they only switched from the C3070 to the C4070 about 2 years ago, so you still have plenty of years left before they can make the unit EOL (end of life). However, that C3070 was quite a popular model, so I'd imagine they will be supported well beyond that.

That's good to know about having a fair bit of years left on the C3070. In an ideal world, I'd either keep both or get rid of the Xerox and get an offline booklet maker instead but I just don't have the space for even a small booklet maker at this point.

 

[gazfocus]

I went from a Versant 80 to the 280 and there was a considerable improvement in front to back registration on heavier stock. I don’t have any issues with color shifting if I calibrate after it’s warmed up. I don’t run much stock over 350 gsm so I can’t say how it handles auto duplexing on anything over 350 gsm but it does fine on auto duplexing 350 gsm stock.

Running coated stock on the 280 is still an issue and the 2nd BTR will need to be replaced frequently, but it you run a mix of jobs and not too much coated stock it’s a great little machine. Unfortunately, I don’t have much confidence in where Xerox is going with the Versant line.

Since the 280 is now 3 years old your dealer should be able to locate a used one, I wouldn’t recommend upgrading from the 80 to the 180 at this point.

I've asked our Xerox dealer to keep an eye out for a relatively low mileage Versant 3100 as a potential upgrade from the Versant 80 but hadn't thought of the Versant 280 as I thought that was a fair bit newer than 3 years old...will have a look.

Unfortunately, we do print a fair amount of coated stock. We are moving away from business cards, flyers, etc as it's much easier to outsource jobs like that but we do print a lot of greeting cards (on 350gsm coated and uncoated), postcards and self adhesive papers (self adhesives being the most volume I'd say).

We've just had to have the 2nd BTR replaced after running a few thousand uncoated sheets of 120gsm and now waiting for a new belt for the fuser as the belt has torn. I have been told we don't use the Xerox enough and that it should run smoother when we use it more.

 

[pippip]

I'd ditch the V80 if I was you. If it was the newer V180 i'd say keep that but V80 is too old. I'd normally say keep the Xerox if you're getting a new Xerox so the two can share job loads if problems arise as print should match better going forward.

The V80 is reaching EOL round the world next year so getting parts will be trickier.
I've recently run into Xerox sending refurbished 2nd BTRs and they are junk, I put a new one in yesterday and today I'm getting marking after a few hundred sheets of coated stock. I'd agree as others have said about the drums, I'm getting mad life out of them now.

Also if you have a bunch of toner you've purchased yourself for the C3070 then when are you going to use them up? when your contract is out you'll either be getting rid of the machine or it will breakdown and you won't justify fixing it.

 

[Ynot_UK]

In light of

The Xerox, we bought 2 years ago (ish) used and while it’s under a service contract, it does seem to go wrong a lot more frequently

this machine has got to be the one to go.

If you have no fallback, you absolutely need to keep the most reliable machine.

 

[richsweeney]

If you run envelopes, and don't want to open the flaps, then the xerox 180. They both do good registration, but the konica takes about 7 clicks to get your paper registered front to back.

 

[gazfocus]

If you run envelopes, and don't want to open the flaps, then the xerox 180. They both do good registration, but the konica takes about 7 clicks to get your paper registered front to back.

We don't do envelopes. Mainly SRA3 sheets of varying thicknesses (mostly 350gsm card stock) and lots of self adhesive paper.
The Versant 80 is great when you use SIQA but when doing cardstock and anything larger than A3 you have to use the document glass rather than the document feeder which then brings with it human error/inaccuracies.

The other thing I found with the Xerox vs the Konica is the Konica handles different papers much better than the Xerox out of the box. The Xerox tends to need more setting up to get certain papers to print correctly and still haven't really got the hang of that.

 

[gazfocus]

Just thought I'd post an update to this thread.

I've made the decision to keep the Xerox for now and sell the Konica. I'm aware that I 'should' be doing the opposite, and it's been an incredibly tough call to make, but my main reasons are as follows:

1) I have the booklet finisher and square fold trimmer on the Xerox. We do a fair amount of booklets for one particular customer and I don't have the funds to buy an offline booklet maker at the moment.
2) Versatility - Having thought about envelopes, though we don't print them currently, I like the fact the Xerox can print on envelopes without needing a different fuser. We also have the decurler module on the Xerox which makes doing NCR much easier as the KM curls the paper and makes NCR a lot more awkward.
3) We are hoping to buy a Versant 3100 shortly after Christmas so it sort of makes sense to have two Xerox machines so the output can match from one to the other.

Obviously, there are just as many, if not more, negatives such as the KM doing 350gsm duplex vs the Xerox only doing 300gsm (though the Xerox will do it if you tell it it's 300gsm), we've had more service calls on the Xerox in 1 year than we've had on the KM in 5 years, however, the engineer puts that down to the fact we barely use the Xerox and has assured me the Xerox, once used properly, will be more robust than the Konica.

Ultimately it came down to the fact I needed to make a decision one way or the other and I wanted to keep the booklet making ability.