As I understand, when the factory trained Engineers leave or being laid off from Kodak , they will take the service Dongle with themselves. I thought the Service Dongle is the property of Kodak and only used by Kodak employee engineers. Beside these, having the Service Dongle, doesn't mean the Engineer is factory trained, he might bought the Dongle from an angry Kodak employee who had being laid off . I disagree with the idea of a factory trained Engineer knows more about the machine than a freelance Engineer. We all trained in the factory, but experienced in the field. The training was only the opening of the door and building trained Engineers' confidence on the machine. I still believe, but do not insist, that the machine owners have to have control on parts, service and consumables. The machine buyers can decide who to call, a factory trained engineer from Kodak or a freelance engineer. This can be achieved with Screen,Fuji, Heidelberg and Agfa in the free market world, but certainly not with Kodak no matter if their machines have excellent performance or not.
Farshad, you do not know enough about Trendsetters and you are misleading the people on this forum.
I wonder how can you provide service on these machines when you have no idea about how they work.
I would advice anyone against allowing a freelancer without previous Creo/Kodak training and extensive work experience touch their machines and especially the lasers.
I'm working in Kodak service (former Creo) for many years now and I have to make the following corrections:
1. All Trendsetters can be accessed without a service dongle - MPE/MCE/GMCE. The only issue is that you cannot run scripts for laser advanced diagnose or TPA for plate setup. The fact that you do not know how just proves your lack of knowledge.
2. Service Dongles only make device access easier through Service Shell and TPA, by providing a graphic interface and scripts designed to diagnose and make laser adjustments for plate setup that can also be done without it. Dongles have to be constantly updated from internal servers or will expire in a couple months. I must add here that all Trendsetter News machines have license for Service Shell access.
3. There are more than 12 000 Trendsetters in use worldwide today, more than any other 8-up machine ever built and that should tell something to anyone. We have machines in service built in 1996 and still running strong. You can see on this forum lots of people asking questions on MPE machines that stopped being produced 10 years ago (2002) and I see you're selling them on your website.
While Screen is without doubt a very good machine, it does not even come close to a Trendsetter with regards to imaging performance (for those that care about it)
Screen tried to copy the Creo Laser with their GLV lasers but the results were far from expected.
Another thing is the speed - the very same engine found in the cheapest manual Trendsetter is the same with he one from the Trendsetter News 200 that can image up to 110 full 8-up thermal plates per hour. Show me one machine from Screen that can come close to this.
Another aspect that people in the printing industry in North America should be aware of is about service. Kodak offers 1h remote support and next day parts and service onsite for all their contract customers. Screen does not have a solid service infrastructure and it could take weeks to have a device repaired. While this may be acceptable for the small print shops it does not work so well for the big and time critical printers.
Of course, this comes at a cost. A very high one, which is to blame on Kodak leadership which brought the company in bankruptcy and are milking now the only viable business left.
In Creo days service was much cheaper and faster and a lot of times provided for free.
With all these said, I cannot advise anyone in buying a new Kodak device these days due to the uncertainty of the bankruptcy process, but a used one will always be a good choice.
