Hello All,
I could use some advice at several machines for mono printing, if any of you has experience with one of the following machines, please submit your findings. Im thinking about buying one of the following:
- Ricoh Pro 907EX (or 1107EX)
- OCE Varioprint 4120
- Xerox 4112
Any advice is welcome!
Dennie,
As a tech that's factory trained on both the Ricoh 907/1107/1357 as well as the Oce' Varioprint line, I'll offer up my experiences on both.
Ricoh: I have an 1107 and a 1357 side by side that both have 1.1 million after 9 months and they're running flawlessly so far. Here's where they shine - they're the quietest machine I've ever has in a printshop. All the drive systems are run via stepping motors instead of one main motor & gears/clutches, so clutch failure is a thing of the past. Toner - you slip in two massive bottles and you're good for a couple weeks. These bottles are about half a meter long each and feel like several kilos.
When maintenance has to happen, the tech replaces units and then rebuilds them after the fact, so the downtime is kept to a minimum. I have yet to replace any feed tires after 1 million (standard pre-feed, feed & sep tires). There's a 500k pm, a 750k pm and a 1.1 million pm; I just do them all at 750k. Yeah, this drives parts costs up a little, but I believe the fewer intrusions are worth it.
If there's a jam (surprisingly not often) you'll find the paper path was designed for Japanese hands. It can be a little bit of a squeeze to get your fingers into where you need to go. However, the Oce', in some cases, requires you to actually remove chunks of the internal components to clear jams. Very time consuming.
Oce': Had a VP6250 prior to the Ricohs and we loved it. The speed & registration are unmatched in the segment and they have the potential to do long runs without any work. 'Potential' is the operative word.
Very, very, very loud. If it's in the back of a print shop, no big deal. If it's anywhere near the workstations, you're gonna struggle to hear conversations. There are no swappable maintenance kits, so each unit is rebuilt at the time of service. Because of the heat they generate and the way they're designed, going from running to tech mode to do a bit of work and then back to running will take much longer than Japanese boxes.
Ricoh, you can replace a lot of the components as a user. Oce', not really. The Oce' system requires the tech to have a laptop with proprietary manuals, and several software keys to hook up to the machine and make adjustments. If the laptop fails (or you want to fire Oce' for lack of service) you'll not be able to find anyone else to work on it. With Japanese boxes, manuals are readily available and you can download them yourself. The few parts that you can replace on an Oce' are a tough to access and, like stated before, requires excessive downtime due to cooling/warmup.
The toner in the Oce' comes in 1 liter bottles and it takes six to fill the machine. If you're not careful, you're gonna wear some of it. They've had this design since I started working on Oce's in '96 and I can't believe they haven't come up with something better.
Since it uses two print engines running face to face to do same-time duplexing, the registration is awesome. Since it uses two print engines running face to face, the complexity of the system makes for increased repair times. Honestly, going back to the Ricohs, with the old school duplex system hasn't been as difficult as we thought. No real jamming issues and speed doesn't really seem to suffer.
We were really concerned when our bosses went from the Oce' to the Ricohs but found, quickly, that our concerns weren't warranted and we love our new machines. Oh, I'm an on-site tech for a Media Center, so I have no real allegiance toward either, beyond which one makes my job easier as a tech.
