New Ricoh Pro c7500 launches

[Shawnd]

So what advantages have you seen on the 7500 vs the 7200?

The ix1700 came out but is to rich for my blood So much for inkjets dropping in price.

 

[kdw75]

So what advantages have you seen on the 7500 vs the 7200?

The ix1700 came out but is to rich for my blood So much for inkjets dropping in price.

Let's see. I would say the biggest advantage for us is the fact they will essentially bleed off 3 sides of the sheet now. That is the one thing that immediately stands out since it makes my life easier on a daily basis.

I'm not positive yet, but it seems to do noticeably better on textured stocks without having to change any settings. I have run a variety of stocks, some of which like vellum bristol used to require me to use textured paper mode, which was slower, and then tweak 1214 a little to get good blues. So far I haven't had to touch any of the settings. They got rid of the paper transfer roller and replaced it with a small belt assembly.

 

[Shawnd]

Interesting about the PTR no longer being used, does the belt assembly have to be changed as well due to lines from different size stocks?

If you get a chance to do a video about the bleed I would be interested in seeing that, I have not seen that mentioned before.

 

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I have found a workaround for the VD issue. If you "process and hold" the job then print it doesn't seem to crash. I suspect there is some type of communication issue. I also notice the blue status light will frequently stay on solid instead of flashing for no rhyme or reason.

Japan and Fiery are working on some updated patches that should be released soon (hopefully).

 

[kdw75]

Interesting about the PTR no longer being used, does the belt assembly have to be changed as well due to lines from different size stocks?

If you get a chance to do a video about the bleed I would be interested in seeing that, I have not seen that mentioned before.

When our service guys installed it they seemed just as surprised about the bleed ability. We regularly run 12.5" x 19" stocks and just barely have enough room for cut marks. Our cutter was ecstatic to see this one giving her cut marks on every job.

The marks from different size paper are usually on the fuser roller, but yes you have to replace this belt, but it seems much more resistant to damage than the old roller. This is just like a smaller version of the belt that transfers the toner. They went to a fair amount of trouble moving the drive assembly for it to the operator's side. I am optimistic. Still runs envelopes just like the old version with the refolding of the flap. Registration is every bit as good and it seems to run envelopes faster through the bypass tray. I have been told it also is faster with mixed media, but haven't tested it out yet.

 

[Shawnd]

When our service guys installed it they seemed just as surprised about the bleed ability. We regularly run 12.5" x 19" stocks and just barely have enough room for cut marks. Our cutter was ecstatic to see this one giving her cut marks on every job.

The marks from different size paper are usually on the fuser roller, but yes you have to replace this belt, but it seems much more resistant to damage than the old roller. This is just like a smaller version of the belt that transfers the toner. They went to a fair amount of trouble moving the drive assembly for it to the operator's side. I am optimistic. Still runs envelopes just like the old version with the refolding of the flap. Registration is every bit as good and it seems to run envelopes faster through the bypass tray. I have been told it also is faster with mixed media, but haven't tested it out yet.

Is the belt part of the TCRU program, is it something you can change?

 

[kdw75]

Is the belt part of the TCRU program, is it something you can change?

Yes it is.

 

[Shawnd]

Ahh, thanks for the pic, I was thinking it was the same belt that is in the fuser but that looks more like the transfer belt.

Speaking of which, the magnetic underside of my transfer belt started ripping off the other day and I got sensor/timing errors, tech came in and cleaned the sensor and ripped the rest of the magnetic piece off that was hanging and it has been running ever since. New belt is in just waiting on it to stop running Not sure how it is going about getting its timing?

 

[Shawnd]

I had to reread that, so just cut marks are bleeding off the page. I was wondering how a full image bleeding off the edge would do, I would think it would fill up your waste toner bottle really quickly and not sure how all that excess toner flying around would be handled.

 

[kdw75]

I had to reread that, so just cut marks are bleeding off the page. I was wondering how a full image bleeding off the edge would do, I would think it would fill up your waste toner bottle really quickly and not sure how all that excess toner flying around would be handled.

I ran a letterhead the other day and it had a solid that bled on 3 sides. No issues with that. Only the lead edge has a margin.

 

[kdw75]

Last Friday when I went home the machine was working. I stopped by Sunday to get a jump on printing some rush jobs and found the C7500s monitor solid white and frozen. I did a power cycle and found that it wasn't reachable over the network and the Fiery server wouldn't launch. After poking around in Windows I found that the network controller was no longer recognized in the Fiery and it didn't have a driver loaded. Tried to do a restore from the USB drives they made the week before and that wouldn't work either. It would boot, but no option to restore. Service came out and ran into the same problems. Finally, they called someone for help and after about 2 hours they decided it must have been a loss of power during a Windows update, though they weren't entirely sure and said there were around 50 patches currently in the works. They also said one of the patches we had installed on ours was causing issues and needed to be removed, but they couldn't until they got a patch to remove it since it was necessary for other critical patches.

The hardware on the machine is great, but boy is the software feeling like Alpha. The machine had 4 of the above-mentioned EC error while running some brochures today. The only things it runs without errors are envelopes and business forms. Simple stuff. Listening to Ricoh they are implying it is Fiery issues, but my gut tells me it is the new Ricoh Software they are running on the machine in place of the Android. I suspect the two didn't do enough to make sure the Fiery and the Ricoh software are working together properly.

 

[Shawnd]

Thanks for the heads up, I might be better off waiting for an affordable cutsheet inkjet to come out. I am happy with my 7200 currently.

 

[kdw75]

Thanks for the heads up, I might be better off waiting for an affordable cutsheet inkjet to come out. I am happy with my 7200 currently.

I got a call today saying they have a firmware update for the printer, NOT the Fiery, which is supposed to fix the error. They are supposed to come up and install it tomorrow. I will let everyone know how that goes.

 

[Shawnd]

Any updates on how the 7500 has been running?

 

[kdw75]

Any updates on how the 7500 has been running?

Hehehehe....After about a month of tearing my hair out of frustration and multiple attempts to reload the RIP hours our technician said he would have to escalate things. I contacted our salesman at that point and told him what was going on, apparently, he had no idea there were issues. Two weeks ago the tech came back with a RIP reload that had something like 50 patches, some of which were not public yet. He imaged that onto the RIP and boom everything was working without EC errors. We have put 600,000 12.5x19 clicks on it in the past 9 weeks. It still has some small glitches about once a week, but a reset fixes. At this point I really love it. Both our 72xx machines would run slowly on certain files that we could never figure out. This machine doesn't do that and seems to have fewer jams. It also runs 20pt plastic better. Our only remaining issue is Fiery Color Profiler Suite always crashes at the end of profiling leaving profiles partially installed. We are waiting on a resolution to that, but it isn't anything more than an annoyance.

To sum things up it is a great machine at this point and I would take it over our old 7200 any day especially since it costs less and has a lower click rate.

 

[Shawnd]

Glad to hear they fixed the issues

Have you tried running #10 envelopes through it lately? Curious to see how that is going or if it still has the refold like the 7200.