Re: Platemaking on various Xante printers
We've been using an HP5000N for making plates for the last seven years and for much of the time it has worked really well imaging lineart plates--grayscales are OK and screens not so good.
Well the HP5000N finally died and in looking for a reliable replacement we opted for the new Xante Platemaker 5. We Iooked at the HP5100N and although it's a great laser printer that will image laser pates, it is still a four year old machine that is no longer supported by HP; and Hurst, who makes the Smartplate laser plates, has not been able to get the latest HP5200 to image plates well.
Now as for the used stuff out there. Well after struggling the last six months with a dieing HP5000N, we were not going to buy someone else's problems from ebay--even if it's half the price of a new one . It's like Russian Roulette, there is that one chance in six you're going to get the bullet and I did not want to deal with the off chance of getting a bad one from ebay--not much recourse.
Xante makes a very sturdy laser printer and has been doing so for a while, so we chose to buy it new with a warranty, purchasing it through Kelly Paper Company. This we way have leverage should we have issues with Xante. Since we've installed the Platemaker 5 we've had no problems with the plates, they're working really well for imaging plates with lineart. Now grayscales are a little better, but large area screens are still an issue; however, we did NOT purchase it to image grayscales and screens. Xante is working with us to improve the screens, but even if we can't get better screens the Xante has made us much more productive imaging the less critical one and two color work; we have an imagesetter for those critical jobs and in God's timing we'll probably purchase a metal CTP next year to replace the imagesetter.
Now Xante has had a bad rap over the years and some of it deserved. But Xante has been great in customer support and installation with the two printers we purchased (we also got the Ilumina color printer). Some have complained about the phone based installation and support and how unprofessional it seems. People these machines are "hopped up" laser printers and not like the Presstek DPM , Mitsubishi DPX and even Xante's Speedsetters (formely RipIt) which need much more preparation and installation and does require a tech to install. Since they're new machines we have not had any service issues but when I have called about minor issues they have been resolved rather quickly.
Edited by: Jaime Zuniga on Oct 20, 2007 2:55 PM
