Thinking of buying an Indigo or an iGen, have questions

[TonyD]

Hello,

We are thinking of purchasing either a HP Indigo 7500 or a Xerox iGen 4. Basically, we're looking for a list of positives and negatives for each press. We want to be sure that we've got as much information in front of us as possible so we can make the right choice. Another question I have for you digital press owners is, what do you wish you would have been told up front before purchasing the press? Is there anything you know now that would make you lean towards one press or another, and why?

I greatly appreciate your time for helping my company and myself make this difficult decision.

Thanks,
Tony

 

[kevneto]

Though I can't speak to the specifics of either press, I have heard that the Igen 4 has easier maintenance than the Indigo. Perhaps HP has remedied some of this, but of all the big iron, the Igen seems to have the easiest maintenance from my research. And that can be a big thing in the production world.

Your press operators will play into this huge. Know what kind of training these companies will provide. One week offsite with some training on-site barely provides a foundation once a real head-scratcher happens(which it will in the first few months). What kind of back up/technical support system is there locally? Muy importante!

Also, get the biggest, most powerful front end you can get. Sometime we get lost in all the bells and whistles of the press that we forget the importance of the DFE, especially when doing variable print. I maxed out the power of they DFE on my Nexpress and still haven't been able to throw a file at it that it can't crunch through at full speed. Talking about many versions and thousands of variable graphics in some instances.

Look at your market and the type of printing you are doing. Are you trying to match pantones. spot colors etc or just cranking out tons of basic CMYK? Don't get sucked into all the possibilities of what the press can do and what you think can sell. Get a press that will take care of your customers needs right now with a potential for growth. Customers are not buying all the bells and whistles in this economy. They want it fast and want it cheap. Be very careful of specialty stuff unless you have a ready market. What's the use of having 6 or 7 color stations when your clients will only buy 4 colors?

These are just some of the things we have run through in the digital press market. Primarily, make sure you have the business to feed these monsters. They love to run and run better the more you feed them. And with the price tag on them, I would guess anything under 500,000 impressions/2 shifts could be a losing proposition.

Just my take. Best of luck in your decision.

 

[TonyD]

Thanks a lot for your detailed notes, Kevneto. We will definitely take everything you just said into account.

 

[John W]

Default Thinking of buying an Indigo or an iGen, have questions

Default Thinking of buying an Indigo or an iGen, have questions

Make sure to take a look at Fuji's Jetpress720 for a different (and I argue better) point of view:

Operator accessible parts maintenance and consumables.
Not paying by the click or using specialized pigments ($$$)
Good speed and exceptional quality.
20.5 x 28.5 output, 2700 shts per hr.
Litho Pressman friendly (it's a litho press with inkjet heads!)
etc

John W

 

[gerry_ire]

Ask your Accountant

Ask your Accountant

Hi Tony,

Both the Xerox and HP technlogy have improved continually over the past 5 years. I have used machines from both companies over the years. You need to make this decision in pure financial terms. This requires that you have to make assumptions based on you own market.

Firstly, establish the cost of ownership.

Capital Cost
Finance Cost over Life time
Less Cash Resale Value (If Any)
Operator Cost
(Both require competent operators as opposed to button pushers)
Maintenance Cost
HP traditionally charge a monthly maintenance charge, which is a pet hat for all the HP users I ever met.
Other Overhead
Power, Insurance, Climate Control, Waste Disposal

You can add up these costs over the machine life-time. Divide this by your budgeted Pages sold, and you will have your running cost per page excluding consumables.

Consumable Cost Per Page
(This is CRITICAL. If you can sell enough print to drive these machines at say 70% capacity over their lifetime (5 years), you will spend 3 to 5 times more money on consumables versus the capital cost.

Your Market.
You know best what your customer expectations are. High end work requires that you use a HP or Igen, and you need to get a premium or at least a guarantee of repeat sales from your customer base to justify the investment.

New Konica Minoltas & Ricohs now come closer quality wise, with a significantly less cost of ownership.
Historically, you would expect a lower click cost on Igens or HPs, although the gap between High End and Mid-Market presses mentioned seems to have narrowed. Typically, 2 or 3 of these machines will cost less than 1 HP or IGen.

Finally, you should keep in mind that in the global digital print market HP & IGen account for a small % of total pages produced. "commercially Acceptable Colour" is 90% of the market and can be produced on smaller machines.

They are both good products. Just make sure you make your decision with you head as opposed to your heart.

Good Luck !

 

[kaiserwilhelm]

We once owned a Nexpress. We got to end of lease and got an Igen. I will not tell you what I thought of the Nexpress as I was raised to not cuss in public.
As to the Igen 4 - LOVE it. They are correct on maintenance. I put the back end (the actual box) with very high marks. Very. I put the front end software as poor. Hopefully, you will drive with another program and feed dumb pdfs (already imposed, etc) into the Igen 4?
If not, then have the right operator. There are many things that the software does not allow (IE, want to go 15 up??? Well, they do not give you that choice. You get a "multiple up" choice. It then tries to put them how it wants to.
My point is that if you have a sheet being printed somewhere else that is exact .33 gutter left and .25 gutter right with a middle gutter of .5 inches....NOT gonna happen on their front end software.
Other than that? Absolutely beautiful machine.

 

[Elbertjolley]

I think the Indigo 7500 is way better than the iGen but, I am kind of bias because I'm an Idigo 7000 operator. The 7500 with white ink upgrade you can do some really cool stuff but, I will warn you the white ink is a pain in the neck with keeping the cunductivity right. just my two cents worth

 

[Joe Duffy]

Found this today - great for making this type of decision on HP vs. iGen

http://www.spencerlab.com/reports/SpencerLab-Xerox_Availability_WhitePaper_Oct2011.pdf

 

[JudP]

Hello Tony, I have two Igens and six Indigos along with a 40" Heidelberg and a 38" six color web and I can tell you that nothing beats the Indigo for overall print quality. The Indigo is an actual press - it has a blanket and a "plate". The Indigo "ink" is very similar to actual offset ink and with an Indigo you have the ability to run PMS colors. We have two ink mixing stations where we can mix our own PMS colors and create our own custom colors.

In terms of maintenance the earlier posts are correct, the iGen is easier to maintain however the newer Indigos do require much less maintenance. Another factor in regards to this is that HP prefers that their customers handle their own service, do their own maintenance, etc whereas Xerox won't let you. We are one of Xerox's largest US customers (we have numerous black and white Xerox digital presses as well) and after much back and forth with them, got Xerox to train our operators on performing maintenance and many service routines however this is not something that it normally done. HP will train you (actually they require your operators to train) on several levels of operating, service and maintenance.

These are all things to consider...