Ricoh C900

[msaeger]

Greasy/oily look on glossy stock - depends on colors used in the print, but some jobs look really bad on glossy (especially jobs with black/gray tones). Yes, we used the approved paper and settings.

How many prints do you have ? When I have seen this rebuilding the fuser has fixed it.

 

[UberTech]

I believe both companies have decent service. Both sides have customers who love them, and I am sure they have some that hate them. I have some other things I have heard about the Ricoh that I would like to know if they are true. I have been told locally that the Ricoh C900 is Ricohs old black and white machine with color capabilities. I guess this means instead of building this machine from the ground up, they just threw some color technology in a exsisting machine. Thanks for all of your help guys.

Unlikely. I have never seen a machine, particualry tandem that started life as black and white.

 

[X33]

I have been told locally that the Ricoh C900 is Ricohs old black and white machine with color capabilities. I guess this means instead of building this machine from the ground up, they just threw some color technology in a exsisting machine.

This is an interesting statement. I hope we can confirm this.

A few years ago, when the first digital copiers came out to the market, some companies/brands needed to catch up with the technology from their competitors and because they just didn't have the time or R&D to build a digital copier from scratch, they took their old analog copiers and modified them to make them digital.

I wonder if this is what happened to Ricoh coming in the production market as the last player.

 

[msaeger]

This place needs a sales free forum. What difference would it make if a machine is based on a different one or not if it does what you want at the cost you want why does anything else matter. What does based on or modified mean even.

 

[Keith]

This place needs a sales free forum. What difference would it make if a machine is based on a different one or not if it does what you want at the cost you want why does anything else matter. What does based on or modified mean even.

Good point. For the longest time (and it may still be so) but the Corvette has an engine with OHV (OverHead Valves) witch is considered an old technology when compared to engines with DOHC or SOHC (Dual and Single OverHead Camshaft, respectively). And the Corvette will beat the pants off a lot of those cars with overhead cams.

 

[Rooster]

Pro C900

Pro C900

I work for Ricoh and am closely associated with the Pro C900.

It is NOT a deriative of the Black and White engines. It is a new build and has been developed with the purchase of Hitatchi Printing Systems a few years ago.

The device weighs on 750kg...with the paper deck it is over 1 Tonne. It is a production device not a light production device such as the KM or the Xerox 700.

If you have any questions I am happy to set you straight!!!

 

[msaeger]

Good point. For the longest time (and it may still be so) but the Corvette has an engine with OHV (OverHead Valves) witch is considered an old technology when compared to engines with DOHC or SOHC (Dual and Single OverHead Camshaft, respectively). And the Corvette will beat the pants off a lot of those cars with overhead cams.

I wanted to make a car analogy but I don't know enough about cars to come up with one

 

[sccball22]

I've heard fromsome ricoh owners. Are there any happy or unhappy canon imagepress c6000 users out there?

 

[Craig]

I've heard fromsome ricoh owners. Are there any happy or unhappy canon imagepress c6000 users out there?

Every manufacture, every product made have happy and un-happy customers. It truly is whatever fits your needs.

 

[PrinterGuy]

VDP on C900

VDP on C900

VDP - we have PlanetPress and sending a 4 up, 2 sided, 4 color postcard job with address that runs about 6 ppm. Sending the job as FreeForm speeds it up slightly - about 12 ppm. We can't send the images directly to the printer - PP reports there is no memory. All vendors involved want to blame eachother and get more money to troubleshoot.

Free Form 2 won't work - Ricoh was sent info and sample files - no progress reports for weeks.

Hi CMCRhonda,

Interesting. I have run VDP jobs on that device and noticed decreasing speed with complex jobs. However I got around it in using FreeForm. The device runs rated speed from the first page.
I also had huge performance gain by sending jobs down to the RIP as PPML.
The main factor is how intelligently applications send the information to the engine. Optimized PostScript can help a lot when printing huge VDP jobs. The C900 Fiery supports VPS and PPML so you might want to investigate down that track.
I assume you send the jobs from PP as optimized PostScript?
Do you have all the latest firmware and system software (v4) on your Fiery?
How much of your job is variable? Only the address line or do you swap images etc. as well? What does you Fiery tell you regarding free memory? How much does it have to work with? Quite certain you went through the standard switch off - switch on process, just to make sure

Would be happy to hear how you go.

Cheers
PrinterGuy

 

[Craig]

Keep in mind that the print engine may not be running slower, the processor is not ripping the job fast enough to keep up with the print engine. PPML will always be faster than PDF and PS because it will only rip the static information once.

 

[CMCRhonda]

Hi CMCRhonda,

Interesting. I have run VDP jobs on that device and noticed decreasing speed with complex jobs. However I got around it in using FreeForm. The device runs rated speed from the first page.
I also had huge performance gain by sending jobs down to the RIP as PPML.
The main factor is how intelligently applications send the information to the engine. Optimized PostScript can help a lot when printing huge VDP jobs. The C900 Fiery supports VPS and PPML so you might want to investigate down that track.
I assume you send the jobs from PP as optimized PostScript?
Do you have all the latest firmware and system software (v4) on your Fiery?
How much of your job is variable? Only the address line or do you swap images etc. as well? What does you Fiery tell you regarding free memory? How much does it have to work with? Quite certain you went through the standard switch off - switch on process, just to make sure

Would be happy to hear how you go.

Cheers
PrinterGuy

We send the job with PP as Optimized PostScript. The variable data is address block and occasional copy (visit your personal website, etc). We only have a few jobs pulling variable pdfs, and those are small enough (b&w) we run them on different equipment.

My main VDP issues have been with getting PP and the C900 communicating - I can't use the PP internal FreeForm consistently, and FreeForm2 won't work at all. PP returns an error that we don't have any memory - I'm not sure what you mean by standard switch off - switch on process - I would love to hear more. PP also supports VPS - I think I'll try that out, too.

Ikon did come do a big update, so I assume we have the most recent versions of everything. I will do some checking and verify. I also have started redistilling the PDFs and have met with success in speeding up our jobs, although with some loss of quality on the PDFs.

 

[CMCRhonda]

Keep in mind that the print engine may not be running slower, the processor is not ripping the job fast enough to keep up with the print engine. PPML will always be faster than PDF and PS because it will only rip the static information once.

This is indeed what we experience - the print engine doesn't start right away (self checks, etc) but very quickly catches up to the RIP - and then we wait.

I probably stated it wrong before - we are actually trying to speed up the RIP process, or optimize jobs for the C900 RIP.

 

[CMCRhonda]

How many prints do you have ? When I have seen this rebuilding the fuser has fixed it.

This happened from day one, so I don't think the fuser was bad. It's more like a substrate/toner issue. Some colors just don't look as nice as we expected, and we have returned to our Heidelberg for those jobs, even though they are short run (500 - 1000 pieces).

We are still also pursuing alternate stocks - using a matte stock versus a glossy basically fixes the problem (no oily look), but some customers are stubborn about using glossy stock lol...

 

[PrinterGuy]

Hi CMCRhonda,

With switch off - switch on process I mean switching the device off and powering it back on.
Are you using the right PPD within PP? You need to load the right PPD for the C900 Fiery in PP (you can extract the PPD from the PS driver you download on the Rioch web site).
Which version of PP are you using, 6 or 7?
In saying "I got rated speed using FreeForm" I mean the FreeForm on the Fiery. Send the master documents down to the Fiery and go to "Setup" -> "VDP" and then "create master".
When you print your large run you will have to go to thoses settings again and this time tell the printer to use that master for that job.
I could imagine your FreeForm and FreeForm2 within PP doesn't work because of issues with the PPD.
How did you set your document up? Virtual pages and cachable objects?
I'm sure the problem lies somewhere within those settings. The RIP is deafenetly fast enough to squirt some address lines into a document, no doubt!
What kind of network connection speed do you have there? Are you sure the data is getting to the RIP fast enough?
We'll get it sorted, at least I hope we do.

Cheers
PrinterGuy

 

[msaeger]

This happened from day one, so I don't think the fuser was bad. It's more like a substrate/toner issue. Some colors just don't look as nice as we expected, and we have returned to our Heidelberg for those jobs, even though they are short run (500 - 1000 pieces).

We are still also pursuing alternate stocks - using a matte stock versus a glossy basically fixes the problem (no oily look), but some customers are stubborn about using glossy stock lol...

Well even if you have gotten it since day one it could still be a problem with the fuser there has been updates. I'm sure you played with all the different paper type settings they do make a big difference.

Yeah matte is better than gloss on every laser printer in my experience the people always want to use gloss though. I think maybe they think they will get something like a photo printed on a dye sub or something.

 

[msaeger]

Ikon did come do a big update, so I assume we have the most recent versions of everything. I will do some checking and verify. I also have started redistilling the PDFs and have met with success in speeding up our jobs, although with some loss of quality on the PDFs.

4.0 is the latest fiery system software. It will say the version on the op panel under the fiery tab or on the config page.

 

[PrinterGuy]

Regarding the PP speed issue.
Is your C900 a licensed PS device within PP? I recall that having impact on the ability to cach information on the printer itself.
How do you send the jobs down to the printer anyway? "Print using windows driver..." or "Print..."? Any workflow hooked up to the process?
Is "PP Production" involved in the process? Maybe you can tell us a little about how you build your documents (Page Properties, Document Properties - Resource options etc.)?


Cheers
PrinterGuy

 

[CMCRhonda]

Regarding the PP speed issue.
Is your C900 a licensed PS device within PP? I recall that having impact on the ability to cach information on the printer itself.
How do you send the jobs down to the printer anyway? "Print using windows driver..." or "Print..."? Any workflow hooked up to the process?
Is "PP Production" involved in the process? Maybe you can tell us a little about how you build your documents (Page Properties, Document Properties - Resource options etc.)?


Cheers
PrinterGuy

We use PP 7 (upgraded recently) with the Production Workflow. We do not have an individual license specifically for the Ricoh (Production is the new Server version...). We do design for the Ricoh PPD, not a generic PPD.

We use Virtual pages for the personalization, and the "regular" page for the PDF. I had not worked with the overlay options previously.

I have been using Freeform or generic cacheing - freeform did speed us up some, but also requires sending the master and slave seperate. Freeform 2 won't work at all. Generic cacheing was too slow. From your comments, I looked more into VPS and tried that. I think the major difference there is using the "overlay" for the PDF.

Creating the same file as a VPS, and adding the PDFs to an "overlay" page and adding cacheing to the overlay has reduced the total file size after ripping from 507.8 MB to 48.8 MB. The speed on this particular job is hard to guage, as it's only 66 pages (12x18) after ripping - but I shaved it from over 4 minutes to under 3 minutes. I think the file size indicates a definite improvement. I'm excited to try this on a larger file.

One thing I noticed - the soft proof doesn't seem to work with VPS, it won't distill a PDF - that's not a huge issue, we can work around it, but if anyone knows why (possibly something I am doing wrong) that would be cool.

Thanks for your insights - I'll try to update my progress.

Rhonda

 

[ShortRunMagazines]

Seems like there is a couple of C900 owners on here... I run primarily 80# and 100# Gloss Text 4/4 high coverage and am looking at this machine. We run Magazines, low quantity but high page volume per order (upwards of 15k clicks/order) so this machine, on paper, looks like the best fit short of an Indigo or IGen. What are your thoughts on the box? What service interval are you seeing? Is the RIP Stable?

Thanks,

Jerod.