Printing on Textured Stock using a Xerox Versant 2100

[Shauny Gipping]

We are a Digital/Litho company in the UK. We specialise in high end print and I am having a problem with our Versant 2100
We did a job for a customer last year printing 4 colour on a Textured Litho board.
We had issues with the quality and coverage on the Versant but managed to print the job using our KM BizhubPro 6501. The Bizhub is no longer in use so I am going to have to try and print it through the Versant.
I have tried all the tricks I know.. slowing the machine down.. fooling it to print on a different stock...changing the temp etc but I can't get a full coverage of the image. Anybody have any ideas???
I know that I shouldn't be running Litho stock through the Versant but if you keep it to yourself and not let the engineers know we should all be ok...
Thanks
Shaun

 

[wonderings]

Did you try using the "Secondary Transfer Voltage Adjustment"? This is the only thing that has helped with textured paper and I believe is exactly what it is meant for to get the smoothest image on any stock. I run it seasonally or anytime I start having image issues with solids.

 

[DYP]

Here is a technical bulletin you might want to look at.

Password is admin on our Versant 2100.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Did you try using the "Secondary Transfer Voltage Adjustment"? This is the only thing that has helped with textured paper and I believe is exactly what it is meant for to get the smoothest image on any stock. I run it seasonally or anytime I start having image issues with solids.

Where is this screenshot coming from?

 

[Shauny Gipping]

Thanks for the replies... very helpful... I have been adjusting the Secondary Transfer Voltage Adjustment for various stocks in the past and it works ok..
I tried adjusting it to a ridiculous value and now it prints fine. so rather than it being on say 70 or 80 as an adjustment.. I am using 30-35 . This slows the fuser right down and gives
an acceptable level of print... The downside is that it wont do Duplex at this speed on this stock. That isn't a problem in itself ...just slows down production.
Now got to sort out my registration problem I have...I love this machine when its working but it is so frustrating when things go wrong. This is the second one we have had
as the first one was returned with a major registration issue. We were one of the first to get a Versant in the UK so we were Guinea Pigs for software and Issues etc. We were the ones who flagged the issue
with the auto adjustment that if it was out and saying no on the Fiery, it would then dump the NVM values... Watch this space for any other faults that you never thought you had...

 

[Shauny Gipping]

Where is this screenshot coming from?

This screen shot is from the Stock Library Manager.. Goto Stock Library Manager.. Click on Stock Library.... Click on any stock... Click on Properties... goto advanced set up and the Secondary Transfer Voltage Adjustment is
the second section form the top of the page...

 

[kdw75]

Where is this screenshot coming from?

This screen shot is from the Stock Library Manager.. Goto Stock Library Manager.. Click on Stock Library.... Click on any stock... Click on Properties... goto advanced set up and the Secondary Transfer Voltage Adjustment is
the second section form the top of the page...

We had our Versant 2100 installed in October of '14. Ours has never registered any better than our C75 and the color isn't as stable as our C75.

 

[wonderings]

We had our Versant 2100 installed in October of '14. Ours has never registered any better than our C75 and the color isn't as stable as our C75.

Exact opposite experience for us. We had a nightmare with a J75. Registration always failed, colour changed by the hour, Xerox could not fix it and eventually gave us our money back... well at least put it towards a heavily discounted 2100. Registration is a billion times better and colour is consistent.

 

[Shauny Gipping]

Our first 2100 was installed in February 2015.. out of the 52 or so weeks we had it, we had an engineer on site for at least 1 day for 50 weeks..
Ended up saying we wern't gonna pay anymore for it and got a brand new replacement...So much better but the response times seem to have
lengthened...Maybe we have a black mark against our name...

 

[wonderings]

Our first 2100 was installed in February 2015.. out of the 52 or so weeks we had it, we had an engineer on site for at least 1 day for 50 weeks..
Ended up saying we wern't gonna pay anymore for it and got a brand new replacement...So much better but the response times seem to have
lengthened...Maybe we have a black mark against our name...

Are you saying you had a tech in once a week for 52 weeks? Probably once a month for us, sometimes longer. If it was once a week we would be asking for a replacement or looking at something else for sure, that is way to much down time.

 

[MailGuru]

We have (2) 2100's. Excellent registration and color. Consistency on long runs is awesome. Usually have a tech in once every month or so, but, that's with 2 machines. Anything that has many move-able parts, and, is in continual operation for 10 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, is going to need to be serviced from time to time, whether you're talking about a digital production press, a folder, a cutter, an inserter, or, even an automobile. If yours was down once a week for a year, then, obviously, it was not in line with your Customer Expectation Document, and should have been replaced, which, they did.

 

[Shauny Gipping]

I queried our Customer Expectation Document on a number of occasions....pretty much the reply was about stock or "teething" problems..The upside of it is that I can pretty much fix
any minor problems that would normally need a call out...2nd BTR..Fuser etc...so downtime is now to a minimum...and yes Wonderings, we had an Engineer on site at least once a week
for 50 out of 52 weeks. they literally had their own Tea mug...

 

[wonderings]

I queried our Customer Expectation Document on a number of occasions....pretty much the reply was about stock or "teething" problems..The upside of it is that I can pretty much fix
any minor problems that would normally need a call out...2nd BTR..Fuser etc...so downtime is now to a minimum...and yes Wonderings, we had an Engineer on site at least once a week
for 50 out of 52 weeks. they literally had their own Tea mug...

I think we would be having a talk with sales and a service manager, that is way to much down time. Would be sending that machine back!

 

[Stochastic]

I queried our Customer Expectation Document on a number of occasions....pretty much the reply was about stock or "teething" problems..The upside of it is that I can pretty much fix
any minor problems that would normally need a call out...2nd BTR..Fuser etc...so downtime is now to a minimum...and yes Wonderings, we had an Engineer on site at least once a week
for 50 out of 52 weeks. they literally had their own Tea mug...

I think you will probably find the Litho Textured Stock (y'know Litho being offset) isn't a recommended stock for your digital device. It makes me laugh how many stocks printers try to run through their machines that aren't even meant to be used for digital and then have the audacity to turn around to their printer supplier and expect them to work miracles. The time you just wasted trying to run a non-digital stock, let alone the time and money you just wasted on having your machine engineer trying to polish a turd, could have been better spent on, yes a slightly more expensive paper, the correct stock that will run through your machine.
Blaming the vendor and the engineer fixing your machine is far easier than accepting responsibility for your penny-pinching short sighted attempt at "cost savings" by trying to run non-digital paper. Yes, some non-digital stocks will run fine. But, as you should know, not all stocks are created equal.

 

[pippip]

I think you will probably find the Litho Textured Stock (y'know Litho being offset) isn't a recommended stock for your digital device. It makes me laugh how many stocks printers try to run through their machines that aren't even meant to be used for digital and then have the audacity to turn around to their printer supplier and expect them to work miracles. The time you just wasted trying to run a non-digital stock, let alone the time and money you just wasted on having your machine engineer trying to polish a turd, could have been better spent on, yes a slightly more expensive paper, the correct stock that will run through your machine.
Blaming the vendor and the engineer fixing your machine is far easier than accepting responsibility for your penny-pinching short sighted attempt at "cost savings" by trying to run non-digital paper. Yes, some non-digital stocks will run fine. But, as you should know, not all stocks are created equal.

I think you just added 2+2 and got 7. Maybe read the posts a bit better and you'll see that what you quoted wasn't in relation to textured stocks but in relation a the vast amount of general problems the op was having with the machine that was one of the very first in the country.

Yes the machines aren't designed for litho stocks, doesn't mean you are limited to digital stocks. Like others have advised there are tricks and adjustments to getting more from a digital machine. Default settings will only get you so far. Nobody has suggested its the machine suppliers/engineers fault for what we are trying to achieve in this thread.

 

[grafix]

The Xerox Versant 2100 registration front/back, skew, perpendicularity has been a winner. For some reason after a PM, it never gets calibrated correctly. I am finding I need to manually make adjustments. Very time consuming and a real pain. Any ideas what may be causing this would be much appreciated.

 

[kdw75]

Our auto alignment gets you close, but we are are always doing manual tweaking on critical jobs.

 

[Stochastic]

Our auto alignment gets you close, but we are are always doing manual tweaking on critical jobs.

Ask your engineer for the NVM 757-501 (I think) this will place large toner patches on your stocks during the auto alignment process to simulate real world jobs with coverage causing paper stretch and shrinkage. Then the FWA (Full Width Array) with measure these changes and coverage taken into account.

 

[namelessentity]

We used to have a KM6500. I've never seen a digital device print as smooth on textured media as it did. That machine was some kind of miracle, because even the newest machines won't lay down as clean as those Bizhubs did.

As for litho stocks vs digital, I've found that cutting parent sheets of litho felt stock lays down smoother than any of the digital versions on my Imagepress