We had a horrible experience with our Riso ComColor and after 14 months and quite an investment, we replaced it.
Please know that these units are not designed to run envelopes. They state that are, but when they say envelope they mean standard #10 and they have be impeccable quality. Standard white wove envelopes do not run consistently. You’re going need the much higher quality smooth envelopes that run about $65 per thousand. (Domtar Cougar or Mohawk Smooth) There is only a 3/64” max gap for feeding (less than a 16th inch. There isn’t even a mark on most rulers). This is just not possible to run envelopes consistently and with the typically variation that you see with envelopes.
These machines also use diamond coated KB rollers to keep stock running under the printheads. These rollers wear incredibly fast and that diamond coating comes off and it grooves down to metal. This causes horrible head striking with both paper and envelopes.
Head striking will absolutely destroy the inner printheads, by causing them to be scratched and grooved very easily. A single envelope jam can cause us to need a $3000 printhead. That’s what each printhead costs for us and there are 20. We have replaced a printhead and destroyed the new one the next day with a jam. You are also going to be cleaning ink off those rollers consistently. If you have any kind of tail strike, splatter or head strike, it’s going to dump ink all over those rollers and then roll it onto every other piece of stock, unless they’re cleaned. They have to be meticulously removed by crouching on the floor, taken to a sink to be rinsed and then let air dry. They are diamond coated and you can’t rub or wipe them with a cloth or youll wear that coating faster. I typically had to do this process 5-8 times in an 8 hour shift, and sometimes a lot more.
The printheads are not rugged and extremely delicate. Installing the printhead rollers is a meticulous process and you can very easily scratch a printhead. Any kind of minor scratch will cause a line in your print where ink will not lay. Riso’s printheads are also their proprietary design and have some of the worst output quality I’ve seen. Everything is so horribly muted and fuzzy. It makes memjet look great.
Since you’re looking at buying your machine outright, you may not have all of these things, but we certainly didn’t save money with our Riso. We paid our monthly lease fee, monthly service fee, paid for click charges and still paid for ink at $525 per cartridge (5 cartridges).
If you have an issue, Riso’s support is absolutely horrible. During the 14 month period we had it, there were 4 occasions we were down for 8-10 weeks at a time.
This machine nearly caused me to quit a job I otherwise absolutely loved. The shop caved and finally let me choose a new press.
For our small admin documents and agendas and such, we have a small CanonImagerunner copier. For envelope production, we invested into the iJetColor Pro 1175P and it is the best technology on the market for inkjet envelope production.
if you’re just doing in-house stuff for the office and not doing production, I would buy a nice small copier for that and order your envelopes from a production facility. Printing envelopes is a world of its own. You could also look at inexpensive systems like the iJetColor Classic or iJetColor NXT / Rena Mach6.
For toner based systems, I have always liked the Xante Impressia systems and they produce great quality envelopes inexpensively. The Xante’s also have paper trays and we certainly ran letterhead and such on the Xante too. It just prints slower than inkjet systems. We purchased a used Xante Impressia about 6 months ago, with about 160,000 impressions on it, for about $3000. The people that used it only printed long banners on it. You can probably find a used Xante Impressia for a good price. They do not sell them new anymore. The new model is the Xante EnPress and it has mixed reviews, but I have not experienced it personally.
There are much better systems than the Riso ComColor, but it all depends on what you want to pay for the use it will have. The investment needs to make sense. If you’re doing production for clients, it may be worth investing a little more. It’s soley for in-house admin stuff, the investment may need to be more minimal.
That being said, if you end up being sold on the Riso ComColor, we’d gladly sell you ours.
Was purchased new 14 months ago and is currently sitting in a corner. I’m running color test pages on it twice weekly to ensure the printheads do not dry out as that will also destroy them. We would love to be able to sell it, but need to ensure it’s to someone that will use it for things it’s better suited for.
If you’re just running paper and are willing to keep the diamond coated rollers in good shape, it will probably be fine. If you need to do small quantities of Reg #10 in-house envelopes now and then and are willing to pay for higher quality envelopes that will feed consistently through a 3/64” gap, that would be sufficient too.
We print over 100 different variations of envelopes in our production, and the Riso ComColor does not do that, despite Riso selling it as this miracle envelope workhorse.
Pictures below are the KB rollers that need cleaned frequently after being saturated with ink.
Our model specifically was the Riso ComColor GD9630.
This a post I made here about my experiences when I was looking for other options. Canon & Riso we’re originally going to take back the Riso and provide us with the iJet NXT, but we found out they were being quite shady about the deal and we were losing a ton of money compared to what we leased the Riso at. We ended up really investing in the iJetColor Pro 1175P by Printware and it’s the best decision we ever made for envelope production.
Printing Saga with Riso ComColor:
https://printplanet.com/threads/env...comcolor-looking-at-ijet-nxt-or-mach6.292993/
Wishing you all the best in your decision! I know the decision making process can be hard as you never fully know what your getting into until you have it and have run it for awhile.
~Shane Carper
Envelope Production Specialist
Fort Wayne, Indiana
