Swapping out year old KM7090 for Ricoh 7500

[Robohopar]

Hi Guys,

Just like the title says I'm getting rid of my 7090 that's been problematic for about a year now for the new Ricoh 7500, possibly.

The reason for the changes at the 7090 KM Box has been giving me a lot of issues mainly on the fuser side. Also have issues with my slitter and folding unit. Just getting very skewed folds with inconsistent trimmed booklets.

I'm really hesitant on moving to Ricoh since I don't know many people with one near my area. Does anyone have any personal experiences with the Ricoh 7500. Next thing is that I don't see myself utilizing the fifth color, especially on how expensive the toner is, maybe just utilize a SPOT UV aspect of it. With a fifth color not being an importance of my decision I think about the 9500 being a better option for me however I am really tight on room in my warehouse.

One of my other options is a canon V 1000 that I've heard pretty bad things about on this but my sales guy says it's a great machine.

All tend to overthink a bit and I believe I've covered most of my own questions with my sales guys just trying to cover all angles and any help will be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[SoggyWinter]

I quoted a Ricoh 7200 almost a year ago and the 5th color station was going to be about $20,000 to activate. I think a more pertinent question is how good are the Ricoh and Canon techs in your area? My experience is limited, but I went from having a lemon V3100 to a rockstar V3100 when the tech team changed to a team that supports igens, balteros, etc and has to know what they're doing and be fast and thorough to meet SLAs.

 

[Robohopar]

My KM techs are pretty good. But they are saying the Ricoh techs are much better in my area. Also, I think Ricoh supplies with most consumables and parts that can be easily changed. Which is a plus.

 

[kslight]

I switched out a KM 6085 for a Ricoh 7210 March 2022. It’s been awesome - service is fast and fixes it the first time, I have a bunch of parts on hand for common issues, printer basically “just runs.” I don’t have anything nice to say about my KM experience… though I know some people like them, they didn’t work out for us. Our 7210 has about 2 million on it right now.

We have the 5th color unit and it seldom gets used. My sales rep got them to include 4 different color kits with our unit. We got clear, white, gold, and silver. Its a cool trick but the cost is high, it’s not straightforward to calculate an accurate usage per job cost, and most customers are not looking at ways to make their printing more expensive. And those that are, go all the way and get foil embossing, etc.

If you’re doing a lot of volume, the lower click rate of the 9500 vs 7500 could basically make it a wash in cost. However assuming the 7500 is very similar to our 7210, it should be no slouch either.

As a side note, we skipped most of the inline finishing options. One, because our KM had these and was a headache because of it. Two, to keep the footprint down. Three, it’s IMHO a better investment to get a high quality offline finisher that will last decades instead of paying a lot for an inline unit that you throw away when your lease is up. As such, we bought a duplo dbm 150 for making booklets and it has also been an awesome machine.

 

[Robohopar]

I switched out a KM 6085 for a Ricoh 7210 March 2022. It’s been awesome - service is fast and fixes it the first time, I have a bunch of parts on hand for common issues, printer basically “just runs.” I don’t have anything nice to say about my KM experience… though I know some people like them, they didn’t work out for us. Our 7210 has about 2 million on it right now.

We have the 5th color unit and it seldom gets used. My sales rep got them to include 4 different color kits with our unit. We got clear, white, gold, and silver. Its a cool trick but the cost is high, it’s not straightforward to calculate an accurate usage per job cost, and most customers are not looking at ways to make their printing more expensive. And those that are, go all the way and get foil embossing, etc.

If you’re doing a lot of volume, the lower click rate of the 9500 vs 7500 could basically make it a wash in cost. However assuming the 7500 is very similar to our 7210, it should be no slouch either.

As a side note, we skipped most of the inline finishing options. One, because our KM had these and was a headache because of it. Two, to keep the footprint down. Three, it’s IMHO a better investment to get a high quality offline finisher that will last decades instead of paying a lot for an inline unit that you throw away when your lease is up. As such, we bought a duplo dbm 150 for making booklets and it has also been an awesome machine.

Thank you for your input.

The inline finishers are what make a big difference for me since we run small runs of full bleed templates. Really helps just to one click print these out with the KM right now. Problem is it can't fold straight...and yes they tried everything.

So offline booklet would be a great idea if I was running longer runs. I'm pretty hopefully of the Ricoh working also.

For example? When I would print 20lb stock, my sheets would come out all wavy. With all settings exercised and techs trying mostly everything to fix this issue, I would still get fuser nips throughout the sheet. I have issues with any brand 100lb text sheets wrinkling with medium to high toner saturation unless u do some expert setting adjustments to cool the fuser down. Just a headache.

 

[kslight]

Thank you for your input.

The inline finishers are what make a big difference for me since we run small runs of full bleed templates. Really helps just to one click print these out with the KM right now. Problem is it can't fold straight...and yes they tried everything.

So offline booklet would be a great idea if I was running longer runs. I'm pretty hopefully of the Ricoh working also.

For example? When I would print 20lb stock, my sheets would come out all wavy. With all settings exercised and techs trying mostly everything to fix this issue, I would still get fuser nips throughout the sheet. I have issues with any brand 100lb text sheets wrinkling with medium to high toner saturation unless u do some expert setting adjustments to cool the fuser down. Just a headache.

I believe you when you say it doesn’t fold right. Ours couldn’t fold right, crease right, trim right, staple right, or slit right. And the worst design possible - every sheet passed through it even if you didn’t use the finisher, so sometimes it would randomly start slitting my job (crookedly also) or jam on the slit wheels…if the finisher was acting up you couldn’t print anything. What a mess.

I do small runs on our booklet maker all the time, 20 or 50 or 100 or 1000…it’s just a hand fed unit. I two knife cut books on the guillotine, then let the machine do a face trim. I realize it’s not as convenient as something that comes out of the printer totally finished, but I’ve never had great luck with the inline units so for us this was the way to go.

I don’t have any paper handling issues with our Ricoh, I run everything from NCR to 18pt through it. There are plenty of expert settings you can tweak for your paper profiles, but that’s pretty much set and forget.

 

[Shawnd]

I still run a 7110sx with 5th color and seldom use it, I also got the 7200e so I "could" upgrade it to 5th color if needed. I am sure they make the same thing in the 7500.

I would be leary if you can't find many other customers in the area with production machines, Ricoh let our local tech go due to lack of business, now our techs come from 2+ hours away. The good thing is we are trained on fixing the machine and we do most of the work to keep it up and going, I only have to call for service when parts need to be rebuilt or it is something we can't fix with the TRCU program.

 

[Mike the Print Man]

We had a c7110. It was a good machine for us, but seldom used the 5th color station with the exception of one customer who wanted "spot uv" look to their business cards. The rest of the time we just ran it as CMYK. When it came time for the lease to end we switched the c9200 instead. Unless you've got a ton of work to do with the 5th color unit, I would recommend a c9200 instead, unless space is an issue.

I can't say enough good things about our Ricoh tech's over the years. They come on time, are willing to take a quick phone call or answer a text message, and often try to solve the problem before they even know what's wrong by ordering parts in advance. You can't place a price on good service.

 

[G5MacMan]

"You can't place a price on good service."

 

[TJPrinter]

You can't place a price on good service.

The problem is, how do you really know if you’re going to get good service. I’m lucky that I’ve always had good service on my Xerox machines, either from Xerox direct or the dealer that I have now. I just have to make sure I retire before my tech retires.

 

[kslight]

The problem is, how do you really know if you’re going to get good service. I’m lucky that I’ve always had good service on my Xerox machines, either from Xerox direct or the dealer that I have now. I just have to make sure I retire before my tech retires.

I surveyed various trade partners in town before switching to Ricoh. I also had a list of references from Ricoh I reached out to (which of course I took with a grain of salt, that’s why I talked to our partners).

I found people echoing my sentiment and experiences with KM unsolicited and most Ricoh customers were former Xerox diehards (Xerox direct service declined sharply in my area several years ago).

 

[jwheeler]

We have a C7090 that has been a nightmare as well, but the C6085 has been awesome. Since the C7090 is their newest line, switching to Ricoh is definitely becoming a strong possibility for us. We have two color KM engines and three b/w KM engines, so it would be a big adjustment.

I asked in another forum, but didn't get much feedback...do any of you use b/w units from Ricoh? Can you provide feedback on those? Especially looking for the following feedback:

• if you switched from KM, are the Ricoh's better/worse/same?
• if use their in-line perfect binder?
• if you print a decent amount of manuals/binders with divider tabs?
• how well do they handle cardstock such as 100# cover
• how well do they handle NCR

 

[Robohopar]

We have a C7090 that has been a nightmare as well, but the C6085 has been awesome. Since the C7090 is their newest line, switching to Ricoh is definitely becoming a strong possibility for us. We have two color KM engines and three b/w KM engines, so it would be a big adjustment.

I asked in another forum, but didn't get much feedback...do any of you use b/w units from Ricoh? Can you provide feedback on those? Especially looking for the following feedback:

• if you switched from KM, are the Ricoh's better/worse/same?
• if use their in-line perfect binder?
• if you print a decent amount of manuals/binders with divider tabs?
• how well do they handle cardstock such as 100# cover
• how well do they handle NCR

Can you share your nightmares with the C7090?

 

[jwheeler]

Can you share your nightmares with the C7090?

Yes:

1. Does not hold color consistency throughout runs...even shorter runs. For example, skintones or tan backgrounds shift to pinks. We've started pulling random samples throughout runs, including the first and last sheet to show the service techs how bad it is.
2. Color consistency across the sheet: We run business cards 24up and the left column will be a different color than the right column.
3. Color registration issues on certain corners of the sheet. This has been a major issue when we have small reverse type, or even logos on letterhead and bus. cards.
4. General quality issues such as toning, banding, black marks, and scratches down the sheets will appear even after only a few hundred or a few thousand sheets after the tech worked on it.
5. The SD-513 squareback bookletmaker has been a big disappointment as well. The top and bottom trimming are very inconsistent from sheet to sheet, so we end up having to trim them manually. When we use the face trimmer, it leaves all sorts of marks/toner dust on the back cover. We also have random issues such as skewed pages within a book, or it will suddenly trim several inches off the face instead of just 0.5" trim.
6. The controller would lose connection at least 2-3 times a day, and we'd have to restart everything. We have the KM controller, not the Fiery. After fighting it and complaining to our techs for almost 2 years, they finally had a specialist out here for a few days to finally figure it out. It has been holding steady since then.