Ricoh or Konica

[sandygrove]

We are looking to upgrade our KM 1070 and 1052 and trying to decide on Ricoh or Konica. Our Konica experience has been a little lackluster. We looked at a Ricoh 9200 and liked it. Both companies are giving us good quotes. Does anyone have experience with both brands in their own shop and which machine did you like better?

We print B/W on mostly uncoated paper 250,000+ clicks per month. Our color volume is lower and is printed primarily on coated paper. Can you print 30,000 clicks B/W and then flip to a color job on a 9200 without adjusting a lot of color settings? We cannot do that with our KM1070. This is one thing Ricoh says does not affect their machines. (I know CPC is higher on B/W, printed on a color box-space is an issue. We'd like to get only 1 machine)

 

[Ynot_UK]

We have a Pro951 for B/W and a C4080 for colour. Our monthly volumes are not as high as yours and I wouldn’t dream of going back to not having a dedicated B/W machine. A B/W click on the Pro951 costs just over a third of a B/W click on the C4080. The B/W machine handles pulling substrate from different trays seamlessly, whereas the C4080 is slow changing over, this is very relevant to us as we produce lots of B/W content with two or three different tinted papers interspersed with plain white.
Our machines are with a dealer, not KM direct channel. We have an excellent dealer with the best service we could hope for.
What have your frustrations been, with KM, or your machines?
Having no Ricoh experience and being happy with our KM machines, in your position I’d opt for a 6120 and a C4080.

 

[sandygrove]

Our frustration has been with both the machine and in one occasion the service techs (3 different ones) could not find a solution to an issue when we had a duplex job that would jam on the 1052. We finally replaced all the paper sensors in the duplexing section and that solved the problem. We had to do it ourself and it was very tough getting to all the sensors

 

[Ynot_UK]

Likely paper dust related, on our Pro951, we vacuum the rollers and feed assembly each time the PF-706 drawers are filled to minimise dust. If you're putting >3m per year through your 1052 and that's the only major problem you've had, IMO that's good going.
We're fortunate in having had the same engineer for years and I do understand your frustration starting over several times with different engineers/techs who all fail to rectify.

 

[Shawnd]

I can print a large BW job on the Ricoh 7200 then switch to color with no issues. I did have issues with doing this on the 7100, I would have to go through and clean the machine after a large BW run or the color would have boogers galore in it.

 

[sandygrove]

That's good to know.
Thanks!

 

[sandygrove]

Shawnd, do you have any idea if the same might apply to the Pro 9100 and the Pro 9200? I noticed that the 7100 and the 9100 were launched nearly the same year 2014/2015 and the 7200 and 9200 were launched in 2018. We have a proposal from Ricoh on a refurb 9100 and so if that BW issue existed on the 9100 and was fixed on the 9200, we'd definitely go with a 9200.

 

[Shawnd]

I do not know firsthand, but I do know the 9200 had MANY improvements over the 9100 just like the 7200 had many improvements over the 7100.

The 9200 is a solid box from talking to others that have it and run the snot out of it.

 

[jwheeler]

The B/W machine handles pulling substrate from different trays seamlessly, whereas the C4080 is slow changing over,

@Ynot_UK , there is a setting to fix this under Utility called "Fusing Stability (Mixed Media)". If you change the setting to "Speed" you'll see almost no pause between media switches. More info here.

 

[Ynot_UK]

Thanks @jwheeler that's useful to know.

We had a PI-502 installed on the Pro951 before Christmas, so going forward can do the regular job I experimented with and discovered the pausing on the C4080 "properly" now...

 

[Dmiller35]

We've run a lot of BW jobs on our 7210 and 9110's without any issues switching back and forth. It's even really good at switching within a print job.
FWIW, I have noticed that the gloss level of the toner is higher on the 7210 than our 9110, which may or may not matter to you.

 

[richsweeney]

Any suggestions for a replacement for a xerox versant 180? Between back ordered toner, drum failing after 10%, and the machine can't take more than 12 hours of runtime before something fails.

 

[Craig]

Any suggestions for a replacement for a xerox versant 180? Between back ordered toner, drum failing after 10%, and the machine can't take more than 12 hours of runtime before something fails.

Ricoh C7210. Every manufacture is having supply issues. Xerox got so out of hand we got rid of two machines and went Ricoh.