Looks like we'll be getting a 700 soon..

[che.c]

Our contract is almost up with the two machines we've got (DC240 and a DC260, both with about half a mil clicks on) and it looks likely we'll be leasing a 700 soon. Currently the 260 and 240 are owned.

Have you any recommendations as to which RIP to get? I've only been in prepress for about a year, using the bustled Fierys. I don't have much experience in any particular systems, so in your opinion which RIP is most capable?

High on my wish list is a spectrophotometer (no more off the glass calibration!) - any recommendations there? Something that's automated would be good, as we're leasing I'm hoping it would be affordable.

Also for the printer, I'm thinking a high-cap feeder and the finisher/stacker with the bells on.

So far we have done about 3/4 mil click per annum with a view to growth. Work ranges from business cards, to booklets, tenders and flyers, with the odd bit of graphic arts thrown in.

I've been following a few of the threads on the 700, and the tech's reassured me about a lot of the problems they've been having - however, any recommendations on how to protect ourselves if we get a lemon?

Tips and what to expect learning curve wise would be much appreciated.

 

[leegreen]

The Xerox EX Print server will be of benefit if you are planning on doing a lot of VDP + Impositions at the RIP, otherwise the bustled will serve you fine.

Get the HCF, especially if you are running coated stocks. I find the trays still jam a little too frequently with coated stocks.

The EX does come with an included EFI ES-1000 & Color Profiler Suite
Product Site

The ES-1000 is a rebadged X-RITE Eye-One UV-Cut Spectrometer, so in theory this should work with X-Rite Software (ProfilerMaker for example) and other 3rd party software (ColorEyes), if you so ever wish to use anything other than the EFI software.

The Xerox 700 is not officially supported with the EFI Color Profiler Suite (I will refer to this as EFI CPS from now on) - It will be included in the next update as I am told from EFI. When this update will be released is a guess.

You can calibrate the Xerox 700 no troubles via the Colorwise control panel, but when it comes to making a profile for your media you will need to profile your media using a Generic CMYK device and manually obtain the GCR values which can be obtained from a canned Xerox ICC profile.

I find RIPs always add an additional level of PITA factor to profiling (I am still working on our 700 ICC profiles, testing and retesting), but with a EFI RIP and EFI Spectrometer + software it should be a walk in the park, I am not finding this the case so far, maybe when it is included in the supported machines it will be.

Ask your dealer who is selling you the 700 and the spectrometer if they are trained on both devices and can provide tech support if required. Colour Management takes a bit to get your head around, I am only new to it myself, but making progress the hard way (on my own), it would be beneficial to talk and have training with an expert.

The only learning curve I have experienced is with creating profiles and getting the best results using your stocks (not the xerox stocks).
So creating custom media profiles for each of your media will be small learning curve (these media profiles on the 700 are settings for paper curl, skew, alignment, image transfer etc... not color profiles)

The 700 is labeled 'digital press' (possibly a little mislabeled) however you should expect to get your hands a little dirty to get it up and running to your standards.

All in all I am find it a great machine so far.

 

[Craig]

che.c,
My advice is to get everything you can afford, all the bells and whistles. Nothing worse that taking on a job and wishing you would have had the ? to make the job more efficient.

 

[smatros]

We have a creo rip and it is very user friendly, though has some unresolved bugs and problems that at times can be very disturbing.
Keep in mind, that you will need to use Xerox paper with the 700 in order to get really good results. Almost half of stock that we used to print on with our old 250 is unusable on 700. When using Xerox Colotech paper though, the results are very good, print has almost no gloss and is very comparable to offset output.
I would choose between Creo or FreeFlow. The first is very user friendly (as said) but expect some problems, the imposition on it is GREAT. The freeflow runs on Unix (less windows oriented problems) and I will be able to speak a bit more about it, when I test it on our other machine that will be installed within a month.
The OHCF (oversized high capacity feeders) are working very well. Suggest you take the double unit, despite the price. We have light production finisher with decurler - beware: If you print on coated stock and use any other tray but top, you will see wheel marks in the color finish. They are supposed to vanish within 24 hours, which is not always true. IF you have offline finishing, A very good choice could be the high capacity stacker (although pricy).
In general I would suggest you keep at least one of the old 25x machines around for a while, once you get to know the 700 well it is a valuable unit for almost all types of jobs.

 

[leegreen]

Keep in mind, that you will need to use Xerox paper with the 700 in order to get really good results. Almost half of stock that we used to print on with our old 250 is unusable on 700. When using Xerox Colotech paper though, the results are very good, print has almost no gloss and is very comparable to offset output.

Have you tried setting custom paper profiles and adjusting the image transfer so that you can use non xerox media?

We were mortified by the results on some of our stocks, but adjusting the image transfer produce comparable results to the xerox stocks, though the xerox stocks were still nicer.

 

[che.c]

Thanks for the replies it makes for some interesting reading. I'm keen to get either CX or EX, a production RIP either way, I think it would be a good move, the bustled ones have caused me quite a lot of headaches. I've only heard bad things about Splash, even from the sales people who would make money from it.

The tech was saying that Xerox Freeflow isn't very popular, so he didn't know much about it. Am I right in thinking that EX and CX are windoze and Freeflow is Unix? I have no unix experience (beyond digging around in the terminal in Mac OS now and again) so it might be wise to steer clear of that one.

Basically it seems to be down to EX or CX, is there much of a contest here? My main priorities are reliability and colour stability. I'm thinking here of the fuser and registration problems the 700 was plagued with at the beginning, could someone running one of them (that's either had the problems, then fixed them, or equally hasnt had any problems) comment a bit on what the state of play is there?


What sort of VDP features are there? I usually just use Freeflow masters for VDP and do all the data merging part in ID. Can you feed a CSV into the RIP or something?

Although we have EFI Impose on the bundled rips I rarely use it unless I've got a 200 page book or something. All templates in ID - our source files are that varied that it would take as long to prepare them for imposition as it does to drop them into placeholders in ID. Are the more heavy duty imposition tools a bit less picky about what you feed into them? We are exclusively digital and a small company, no PDF certification or standardised workflow.


As for the finisher, if you can't use the stacker it's as much use as a chocolate teapot. We've got offline booklet maker, wire binder and creaser as well as modest hole punching, perforation and cutting equipment so it's hard to see what we could use the advanced finisher for other than folding and decurling.


I'm keen to get the OHCF - the high-cap on the 260 is one of the most important differences between it and the 240 in here and tis an invaluable bit of equipment. Don't know about the double tray, I'm not sure what I would use it for and it's more trays to keep aligned!


I'm definitely going to secure some training for whatever options we go for. Although I've worked out everything so far I'm guessing that there's gonna be a bit of a leap to production stuff! Plus don't often have the time in production to be trying stuff out.

Thanks for the replies so far, and sorry for the wall of text! I'll have the sales reps tortured with questions as well next time they're round.

 

[SteveL]

... Am I right in thinking that EX and CX are windoze and Freeflow is Unix?

Yep. Though Freeflow isn't hard to learn, most things are done through the GUI and there isn't any need to get into terminal unless you want to.

What sort of VDP features are there? I usually just use Freeflow masters for VDP and do all the data merging part in ID.

Freeflow has "background forms" which are very similar to FreeForm Masters on the Fiery, though you can do more with the background forms. The Creo doesn't have any ability like that, it doesn't have background forms or FreeForm masters.

Can you feed a CSV into the RIP or something?

No, neither the Creo, Fiery nor Freeflow can just take a CSV and turn that into variable print. In all cases the file(s) need to be prepared prior to sending them to the RIP's.

Are the more heavy duty imposition tools a bit less picky about what you feed into them?

If it is printed to the RIP (so it is PS) or PDF or variable data, imposition on each of the 3 RIP's is very simple and robust.

The 700 has a decurler built in, so there is no need for a finisher of somekind to provide decurling.

 

[ian]

Basically it seems to be down to EX or CX, is there much of a contest here? My main priorities are reliability and colour stability. I'm thinking here of the fuser and registration problems the 700 was plagued with at the beginning, could someone running one of them (that's either had the problems, then fixed them, or equally hasnt had any problems) comment a bit on what the state of play is there?

We've had the 700 since november and the fuser problem seems to have gotten better, as far as registration they have managed to drop the shift in half but its still out enought that you cannot print double sided business cards and try to sell them to a client. The last meeting I had with them I was told sorry thats within specs now and nothing they can do to improve it anymore. Unlike the production models like 5000,7000,8000 the specs on the 700 are a bit different, registration is based on 8.5" x 11" sheet on 24lb bond, as soon as you change the paper they are not responsible for how much it moves, and apprantly thats embeded in the paperwork somewhere.

Although we have EFI Impose on the bundled rips I rarely use it unless I've got a 200 page book or something. All templates in ID - our source files are that varied that it would take as long to prepare them for imposition as it does to drop them into placeholders in ID. Are the more heavy duty imposition tools a bit less picky about what you feed into them? We are exclusively digital and a small company, no PDF certification or standardised workflow.

Try using Quiteimposing plus - it costs around $1200 but its the best investment our company ever made.

As for the finisher, if you can't use the stacker it's as much use as a chocolate teapot. We've got offline booklet maker, wire binder and creaser as well as modest hole punching, perforation and cutting equipment so it's hard to see what we could use the advanced finisher for other than folding and decurling.

The offline finisher is not accurate enough for print shops, made mainly for end users who dont care about bleed or shift.

I'm keen to get the OHCF - the high-cap on the 260 is one of the most important differences between it and the 240 in here and tis an invaluable bit of equipment. Don't know about the double tray, I'm not sure what I would use it for and it's more trays to keep aligned!

The double trays help when one tray is out which you can call service for and use the other in the meantime

I'm definitely going to secure some training for whatever options we go for. Although I've worked out everything so far I'm guessing that there's gonna be a bit of a leap to production stuff! Plus don't often have the time in production to be trying stuff out.

By the time to add all the options on the 700.. you are at the same price of a base 5000AP which is a production machine, something you have to think about

 

[che.c]

Thanks for the replies Steve and Lee, very helpful.

Decurler built in is good, the most used part of our finisher at the min is the stacker, and if that leaves marks all over the print on the 700.. well not gonna be much use to us. Also for the double tray, I'm used to running one of the printers from bypass tray so I think I could live with the OHCF being down until a tech arrives.

VDP-wise, if the Creo has nothing.. well that's out of the running. So I guess it's between the EX and freeflow. If there's not much between them in performance, I might go for EX. It'll probably be more useful as experience too, Xerox FreeFlow doesn't seem a very popular RIP.

In terms of imposition I'm thinking of importing to trim/bleed box and so forth. The EFI Impose has to have the pdfs cropped and everything and it can be a real pain. I may just stick with ID for imposition (there's no real budget for imposition software) although it's not without it's pitfalls. I guess just have to see how it goes.

That's underhand about them shifting the registration specs, talk about moving the goalposts. Definitely something to be worked into the contract when we're talking with the reps.
Then again, it ain't a proper production machine.. which brings me to the 5000AP. Would love one, and nearly think that we'd be better to wait until we're really flogging the life out of these machines just to keep up, then take a leap to proper production.


You've all been very helpful, I'm thinking I'd go for

• EX Print Server (with colour profiling software and spectrophotometer and some training)
• Single OHCF
• No stacker/finisher unless we can get one that doesn't mark the print

 

[smatros]

My main priorities are reliability and colour stability. I'm thinking here of the fuser and registration problems the 700 was plagued with at the beginning, could someone running one of them (that's either had the problems, then fixed them, or equally hasnt had any problems) comment a bit on what the state of play is there?

The color stability is ok on Xerox media, it works pretty ok also on several coated papers. Main rule is to test the material a lot, and pick the most suitable. Out of 10 tested, we have only chosen 3 that produce the results that are good enough.
We ran into each and every possible problem on 700 since the install at end of September. Most issues were resolved within first 4 months and now the machine is working satisfactorily. We are a very difficult user having very various jobs, the majority on extra heavy stocks - on top limits of CED.

We've had the 700 since november and the fuser problem seems to have gotten better, as far as registration they have managed to drop the shift in half but its still out enought that you cannot print double sided business cards and try to sell them to a client. The last meeting I had with them I was told sorry thats within specs now and nothing they can do to improve it anymore. Unlike the production models like 5000,7000,8000 the specs on the 700 are a bit different, registration is based on 8.5" x 11" sheet on 24lb bond, as soon as you change the paper they are not responsible for how much it moves, and apprantly thats embeded in the paperwork somewhere.

The registration on srA3 is within 1mm. Same is with image shift within papers in same job. Paper type and voluminosity influences that quite a lot.

Try using Quiteimposing plus - it costs around $1200 but its the best investment our company ever made.

We use Acrobat plugin Crackerjack from ARTS PDF, works great at less then half the price you mention.

The double trays help when one tray is out which you can call service for and use the other in the meantime

Double OHCF is great also, when you print loads of copies - you an filll up all the trays and leave the machine running. We have 2 different stocks, each in own tray, so there is no need to change stocks all the time. Definitely worth buying it.

By the time to add all the options on the 700.. you are at the same price of a base 5000AP which is a production machine, something you have to think about

700 in fact is declared as a production machine. Although it lacks a wide material range the print output is more offset like then on any x000 Xerox machine, especially the 5000 has a very "oily / shiny" output, which can be sometimes disturbing.

 

[saeba ryo]

I don't know whether it's late to have some comment or not & also don't know you decided to select any RIP right now. Now all RIP have standard VDP function. FreeFlow Print Server has "Background Form", Fiery has "FreeForm" & Creo has "VDP tool box or optimize mail merge". All of it available for 700DCP machine.