Riso Comcolor?

[bcr]

Hi all,


Curious as to people's experiences with recent Riso Comcolor printers. We're doing in-house printing of legal correspondence and evidence. Cheap office laser printer quality is sufficient for us. What we want is higher volume printing for faster turnaround and larger print runs. I want to be able to knock out say 50,000 duplexed pages (A4/A5) with inserted tabs within a few days...

We're looking at production printers but with most colour laser printers to get the kind of productivity we would like to handle larger runs we're talking huge expense and a lot of unnecessary features. I suspect one or two Riso 9630s in addition to what we have now might be a good way of boosting capacity without needing to get a 3-phase power connetion.

What I want to know from people is:

i) Quality - are the machines capable of producing acceptable 'office-quality' documents? We really, really do not need advanced colour features that you get on digital presses - it's just a waste for us. Just needs to be clear for legibility of text and reasonably accurate (i.e. yellow is yellow not red).

ii) Mixed Media - Anyone have any experience of using them for mixed media? We use a lot of index tabs and ideally the printer would print and insert custom tabs before each document but I don't think the Risos support tabs. Another way of doing it would be to have a post-inserter inserting pre-printed tabs as a cover for each document.. But I don't see the option of a post-inserter either. These guys are printing what looks like wider slip sheets with tab text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wtESPEOtGQ

iii) Reliability - general feedback online seems to be that as they are simpler units they generally have less downtime than laser machines.. Minimal downtime is important for us given the importance of turnaround time. Thoughts?


Curious if you have any feedback... They seem to have a mixed reputation on-line but I wonder if that is because this feedback is mostly coming from pay for print professionals who expect professional publication standard printing... I suspect we will try to get a demo unit from them...

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

That seems like a lot of printing in just a few days times. Will this be consistent or just short bursts once a month?

 

[bcr]

That seems like a lot of printing in just a few days times. Will this be consistent or just short bursts once a month?

Short bursts now and then with much smaller runs in between... I did 15k last week on a single KM C754e and the week before that had to turn down a 55k job which we outsourced.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Short bursts now and then with much smaller runs in between... I did 15k last week on a single KM C754e and the week before that had to turn down a 55k job which we outsourced.

I'd look at some of the other threads in regards to b&w production machines. I think you'll need to get a service contract with that sort of work load. Look towards Canon/Oce or Konica Minolta (I think). We don't dabble in the b&w production market, but I know those machines are reputable.

 

[bcr]

Thanks, we have a service contract on our current machines and would continue on that basis.

The problem with b/w machines is that many of the docs are partly in colour.

we're talking folders of hundreds of documents that we mostly dont even look at when printing, they just need to come out the printer as automated as possible and with colour parts in colour.

 

[Stickman42]

We have a Comcolor 9050, which came out in 2009. Older, yes I know. We also have Xerox Versants, which replaced DocuColor-era printers. If I had my choice, with 50M impressions to run and insert tabs, hands down I'd go Versant. The cost per copy between color inkjet and toner was wider back then, hence the reason for bringing in the Riso. That's changed over the years.

 

[Joe Duffy]

While the cost gap has narrowed, the thing to keep in mind with RISO is the more you use them, the better thy run. Unlike toner, the lack of heat actually helps with longer runs and constant use. You want to be sure you have adequate service in your area at the volumes you are talking about but the ease of use, cost to own and cost per page make RISO hard to beat in the area you are in.

 

[bcr]

thanks for that Joe!