Making a purchase soon

[Unclej78]

I've been reading lots of posts here over the past week. Here is my background. I manage a Reprographics shop, we print lots of large manuals (800+) with pretty complicated transitions, (ie, white bond single sided, then color pages, then blue pages, red pages and 11x17 foldings). Currently have a (POS) Sharp MX1100, Sharp 550N and a Ricoh 7200/7300 for our color. We have KIP8000's and a Canon W8400 for our Wide format color.

OK, we are wanting to expand our color offerings, currently outsource our color work to another B2B printshop, would like to do more inhouse.

Here is the the gear I'm looking at:
(I'm not going into the finishing options because I've got them configured pretty much the same).

Option 1 - Color - Canon C9065, B&W Image press 1110 being serviced by Canon direct.
Option 2 - Color - KM Bizhub Pro C6501, B&W Bizhub Pro 1051 being serviced by KM direct.
Option 3 - Color - Ricoh C720, B&W 907EX being serviced by IKON.

I've read lots of pos/neg on this equipment, maybe you can give me a some quick information that I haven't seen regarding this gear. I run around 125k B&W month but will sometimes run 30-40k in a day B&W for one of my customers. I outsource brochures, business cards and NCR work.

I've almost come to the conclusion that I can't go wrong with any of these options, that my decision will come down to payments and maintenance.

I'm also taking into consideration the included Fiery options for making my B&W Books easier to print, KM offering Micropress, Canon offering Imageware (I think, going to demo on Tues), Ricoh offering (Eb-1357).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[UberTech]

Im pretty biased so not hints as to what I would go for, however, if you can squeeze it into the budget go for the micropress.

 

[jotterpinky]

I would steer away from the Canon 9065 offering. We have it as well as a Xerox 700 and the 700 will run circles around it. That being said I think you would have better luck with it than the Ricoh color boxes.

As for B&W I believe the Canon 1110 is a fantastic machine and very well built. We've found it able to handle anything you can throw at it. We also looked closely at the KM1051 and thought it was a great machine as well.

This is what I would pick from your list of equipment.
Canon 1110 and KM6501

I've always found the Ricoh equipment to have poor paper handling. We have had Ricoh 1350 and a 906ex B&W engines and they seem to be dogs as far as jamming. The weak point seems to be where the paper enters the machine (at the B2 /B3 Guide board) It will be running along fine and then the B3 jam area simply drops and shuts the entire machine down with jams in every orifice. As for their color boxes I've never been impressed with the quality. I would even put the Canon 9065 above anything from Ricoh except the C900

 

[mattschupp]

Why not buy a Ricoh C900 and get the Nexpress/Canon/IBM/Heidelberg 110 ppm for free? Ask an IKON production specialist about this promotion.

 

[julianheron]

I've been reading lots of posts here over the past week. Here is my background. I manage a Reprographics shop, we print lots of large manuals (800+) with pretty complicated transitions, (ie, white bond single sided, then color pages, then blue pages, red pages and 11x17 foldings). Currently have a (POS) Sharp MX1100, Sharp 550N and a Ricoh 7200/7300 for our color. We have KIP8000's and a Canon W8400 for our Wide format color.

OK, we are wanting to expand our color offerings, currently outsource our color work to another B2B printshop, would like to do more inhouse.

Here is the the gear I'm looking at:
(I'm not going into the finishing options because I've got them configured pretty much the same).

Option 1 - Color - Canon C9065, B&W Image press 1110 being serviced by Canon direct.
Option 2 - Color - KM Bizhub Pro C6501, B&W Bizhub Pro 1051 being serviced by KM direct.
Option 3 - Color - Ricoh C720, B&W 907EX being serviced by IKON.

I've read lots of pos/neg on this equipment, maybe you can give me a some quick information that I haven't seen regarding this gear. I run around 125k B&W month but will sometimes run 30-40k in a day B&W for one of my customers. I outsource brochures, business cards and NCR work.

I've almost come to the conclusion that I can't go wrong with any of these options, that my decision will come down to payments and maintenance.

I'm also taking into consideration the included Fiery options for making my B&W Books easier to print, KM offering Micropress, Canon offering Imageware (I think, going to demo on Tues), Ricoh offering (Eb-1357).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I would suggest you test the RIP's complete. In some cases the micropress color is not up to par, but as always it depends on the application/ user.

What I would suggest to you since your open to all vendors is that you focus on what contract terms & protections you can gain from the vendors... Assuming equal equipment and similar prices the most important factors for you would be term & protections if something went wrong from billing to hardware.