Upgrading to a Canon V700

[RoganJosh]

Hi folks, I'm close to pushing the buy button on the Imagepress v700 - Previously we had an Imagerunner Advance 7065i - for the last 10 years. I can't say it was a great machine - registration - awful, colour - great, then awful after a few sheets, Paper handling - not bad then awful. The one shining light was the servicing - but the techs would only fix the issue that you complain about - not the 5 other things that were wrong with the machine.
Anyway - the business needs a digital press to keep going and we are on fairly good terms with Canon.
I'm wondering whether anyone here knows about the Imagepress V700 800 900 range - am I making the right decision going down this path, or will it just be like getting the Imagerunner Advance 7065i that I purchased 10 years ago.
Thanks in advance.

 

[bcr]

so you had a machine which you weren't happy with, and you weren't satisfied with the level of service where they were leaving multiple problems open and unresolved, but you think you are on good terms with Canon?

you might want to rethink that and get competing offers from the other major manufacturers, and then go and do some high volume stress tests on the machines proposed using your own substrates. then ask them for local clients of theirs and do your own research on their level and quality of service.

 

[kslight]

There are definitely options and you owe it to yourself to shop around, no reason to settle for a machine / service you aren’t totally happy with.

 

[namelessentity]

Registration sucks on the 7/8/900 Canon's. I'd go with someone else.

 

[bcr]

There are definitely options and you owe it to yourself to shop around, no reason to settle for a machine / service you aren’t totally happy with.

you also have no idea about whether you are getting value for money if you don't compare and negotiate based on competing offers.

your current supplier knows what your current deal is. so they have little incentive to offer you a sharper deal unless you push them - you have to keep them honest.

for example - before we set up our repro, our previous supplier offered us a single KM 3070 (not even the press version), and two small office bizhubs for about the same price as our previous deal, including some fixed minimum click charges.

eventually i was able to get two highly specced Ricoh C5310's, three fast colour office copiers, and more than 10 BW small desk MFC's for about the same monthly cost, but with no minimum clicks included (our preference).

In the end I'd say we got a WAY better deal due to putting the time and effort in to shop around and negotiate.

you have to keep your suppliers honest

 

[RoganJosh]

BCR - you gave me serious food for thought. We are a small printing company, 2nd generation family run our first digital "Press" was an OKI - which gave us a taste of what was possible - the consumables cost killed that machine so we moved to a Xerox DC3535 - another terrible mistake driven by the charisma of greedy salesman. It never did what we needed and the Engineers had to set up camp outside our printshop to keep us going. The Canon has been much better relative to our previous 2 machines and although we have had problems, we've worked through them. As we are such a small company we don't buy machines regularly enough to throw our weight around.
After reading your comment, I got in touch with Ricoh this morning - the salesman was very wary of us - saying he couldn't compete on click charges and would rather sell us consumables as required and use a click for maintenance. He pretty much threw the towel in within a 5 minute call.
Your second post about keeping suppliers honest is also extremely thought provoking. I'd like to say we have tried to do that throughout our business suppliers - but recently found out that our paper merchant is been putting his arm in on pricing - we have alerted him to this by cancelling long term orders and using an alternative supplier in the last few weeks. But again - our size is putting us at a disadvantage - we simply don't spend enough on materials to even register on a large supplier's barometer.
As far as I know there are no installations of an Imagepress v700 in my country (Northern Ireland) - but I guess the next step is to push Canon into proving the machine before I hit the buy button.

Namelessentity - you have a simple reply - the registration sucks on v700,800 and 900 - this is entirely possible, but can you tell me what experience do you have of these machines?

 

[pippip]

What would be your average clicks per month SRA3?

 

[kslight]

BCR - you gave me serious food for thought. We are a small printing company, 2nd generation family run our first digital "Press" was an OKI - which gave us a taste of what was possible - the consumables cost killed that machine so we moved to a Xerox DC3535 - another terrible mistake driven by the charisma of greedy salesman. It never did what we needed and the Engineers had to set up camp outside our printshop to keep us going. The Canon has been much better relative to our previous 2 machines and although we have had problems, we've worked through them. As we are such a small company we don't buy machines regularly enough to throw our weight around.
After reading your comment, I got in touch with Ricoh this morning - the salesman was very wary of us - saying he couldn't compete on click charges and would rather sell us consumables as required and use a click for maintenance. He pretty much threw the towel in within a 5 minute call.
Your second post about keeping suppliers honest is also extremely thought provoking. I'd like to say we have tried to do that throughout our business suppliers - but recently found out that our paper merchant is been putting his arm in on pricing - we have alerted him to this by cancelling long term orders and using an alternative supplier in the last few weeks. But again - our size is putting us at a disadvantage - we simply don't spend enough on materials to even register on a large supplier's barometer.
As far as I know there are no installations of an Imagepress v700 in my country (Northern Ireland) - but I guess the next step is to push Canon into proving the machine before I hit the buy button.

Namelessentity - you have a simple reply - the registration sucks on v700,800 and 900 - this is entirely possible, but can you tell me what experience do you have of these machines?

The deal you can get will certainly vary by location and by volume. Even if your current vendor ultimately provides the best deal to you, you wouldn’t know unless you shop around. And it’s likely that if you let them know you are shopping around, they will sharpen their pencil for you. Just business. Previous owner at my work didn’t negotiate the printer contracts, just accepted whatever her friend (a sales rep) put in front of her. When I saw that numbers - having identical proposals in hand from my previous job - we got screwed by thousands of dollars per month, and had a poorly running machine with an apathetic and delinquent service department. I fired them the moment our lease was up. And we only have a single printer also, but I expect are running higher volume, we are able to negotiate very fairly.

 

[namelessentity]

Namelessentity - you have a simple reply - the registration sucks on v700,800 and 900 - this is entirely possible, but can you tell me what experience do you have of these machines?

We are a Canon shop. We have an Imagepress 750, a 10,000 and a Varioprint 6320. We were sold a 750 as a proofing machine and a lightweight backup for emergencies.

It does a poor job of staying in register when you calibrate media. It also does a poor job of holding that registration throughout a run. We've definitely had to re-run jobs because halfway through the job they're several mm off.
We only got the basic model with the bypass tray and the basic 3 drawers. Our salesperson told me if you buy the POD deck the registration is more reliable, so if you do go with Canon I would get one with a POD Deck or the POD deck lite. The bypass only holds around 15 sheets of cardstock, and it does an adjustment every single time you reload stock. so long runs on heavy stock are a chore that requires you to to be tethered to the printer the entire run.

It also jams quite a bit on envelopes, which was another thing we were sold on that was a disappointment.

 

[chriscozi]

Our salesperson told me if you buy the POD deck the registration is more reliable,

LOL - get the upsell quick .

 

[RoganJosh]

We are a Canon shop. We have an Imagepress 750, a 10,000 and a Varioprint 6320. We were sold a 750 as a proofing machine and a lightweight backup for emergencies.

It does a poor job of staying in register when you calibrate media. It also does a poor job of holding that registration throughout a run. We've definitely had to re-run jobs because halfway through the job they're several mm off.
We only got the basic model with the bypass tray and the basic 3 drawers. Our salesperson told me if you buy the POD deck the registration is more reliable, so if you do go with Canon I would get one with a POD Deck or the POD deck lite. The bypass only holds around 15 sheets of cardstock, and it does an adjustment every single time you reload stock. so long runs on heavy stock are a chore that requires you to to be tethered to the printer the entire run.

It also jams quite a bit on envelopes, which was another thing we were sold on that was a disappointment.

The V700-900 are a new range of Imagepress machines - it sounds like you have an older Canon (750) - is this an Imagerunner Advance or similar? If so - yes, I agree the jobs would go out of register quite quickly, even with the POD deck - which we have. Also colour drifts in and out throughout a run - giving huge variation with register and quality on even small runs. But I'm lead to believe that the V700 has a corner register system which should ensure tighter front to back register - even allowing 350gsm to duplex with less than 1mm misregister. I had thought it came with a built in spectrophotometer to ensure colour consistency - but this is an extra for the v700 and only standard on the v900.

@pippip - I'd estimate 50k per month for a mixture of colour and black and white - with about 150k being run on Litho per month. We hope to move more litho onto digital - but confidence is low in the last week - with our landlord increasing rent by 20% from April.

 

[pippip]

If that's 50k per month SRA3, I'd exaggerate that to 75k+. I'd say you'll naturally migrate certain litho jobs over in time.

We had a DC3535, our first digital press, can't say I remember it being too bad but at the time going digital it just seemed amazing and we knew no better.

I'm surprised Ricoh didn't seem interested, maybe just an off day for the salesman. First I've heard of maintenance only click charge in Ireland. I'd still push them for a quote anyway on a proper all in click charge, just to compare.

I'm in Dublin but oddly enough our Xerox sales rep on the V80 we have is based in Northern Ireland, Emmanuel Duffy. Nice chap and always went out of his way to help with anything.

Coming up on end of 1st quarter so may get better interest, I always find end of year is best for deals.

 

[namelessentity]

The V700-900 are a new range of Imagepress machines - it sounds like you have an older Canon (750) - is this an Imagerunner Advance or similar? If so - yes, I agree the jobs would go out of register quite quickly, even with the POD deck - which we have. Also colour drifts in and out throughout a run - giving huge variation with register and quality on even small runs. But I'm lead to believe that the V700 has a corner register system which should ensure tighter front to back register - even allowing 350gsm to duplex with less than 1mm misregister. I had thought it came with a built in spectrophotometer to ensure colour consistency - but this is an extra for the v700 and only standard on the v900.

@pippip - I'd estimate 50k per month for a mixture of colour and black and white - with about 150k being run on Litho per month. We hope to move more litho onto digital - but confidence is low in the last week - with our landlord increasing rent by 20% from April.

The 750 is an Imagepress. If the new V models have corner registration then it should solve all of my complaints with registration. That's what our 10000 uses and it's fantastic.

 

[TJPrinter]

On paper the new V series sounds like a great little machine. Make sure you run some serious tests on one of the new V machines if that’s what you’re looking for

I’d make sure that if the corner registration mark is required for decent front/back registration that it will not get in the way of a similar registration mark that something like a Duplo would use for slitting/scoring.

My biggest problem with the Canon service that I had for the C810 was that if the registration was listed at 1mm in the CED then the techs wouldn’t try get it any closer and that was 1mm on each side for sheet to sheet, so front to back could go off as far as 2mm and that was okay with them. My old Xerox 700 had better registration than that.

 

[billp]

hi interested to know your v700 is going?

as its a strong contender for us also

 

[RoganJosh]

hi interested to know your v700 is going?

as its a strong contender for us also

Well, it took a while to turn up, very much expected in these topsy-turvy times. But Canon stepped-up by providing an office machine so we could at least print some emails. When the machine finally arrived, the delivery company smashed up the POD deck and it was determined that they should pay for a replacement - 3 months later, hoping it will happen this week. We could have used the POD deck for a few long runs, but persevered with loading tray 3 multiple times.
The printer itself....The V700 is impressive for sure and has produced some excellent work - not without issues, but these are more to do with the Fiery. Initially we could only print jobs in duplex (long edge binding) - it took a week or so after installation to realise that this was about print drivers and how Adobe Indesign prints. I have since upgraded our aging iMac to a new M2 Mac mini - which was a huge improvement and set up hot folders - this bypasses the need to print directly to the Fiery - which we did on our previous 3 digital presses.
Colour calibration was the next problem - this is again an EFI Fiery issue - the i1 pro we used previously has been superseded by newer devices from X-Rite and EFI - which do EXACTLY the same job as the older i1 pro - Purely money grabbing from both companies. There's even a patch reader that allows the i1 pro to work - but I can't figure out how to implement the files that it produces.
We have found that colour calibration works extremely well through the platen - and have set up a comprehensive list of materials which match from one to the other.
Registration - this was a wow moment - our previous machines really struggled with front/back reg - but again by using the platen and a register sheet - the machine produces a colour coded 2 sided sheet on the specified material which is positioned under the registration sheet and aligned with an arrow - so every material we use is closer than we could ever dream of (including litho) - it actually compensates for heat shrinkage and slew. This on it's own is a huge time-saver - for those pesky 250 runs of double-sided business cards that used to take ages.
Training - we paid for a day of training and we definitely got that. The trainer was extremely well-informed and when he didn't know he told us, rather than bluffing. We went through the basics like Shading Correction, AutoGradation adjustment and Colour Calibration - repeatedly until our most common materials were in the Fiery paper catalogue. Imposition software and techniques, Registration (as mentioned above), Mixed media jobs - ie Cover material mixed with text materials, staple folded at sra3 - then trimmed on the guillotine to produce excellent results.
I won't go into all the details - but we had a full day from 9.30 to 5pm - the trainer barely paused for a breath - even though he suggested a quick break for lunch, he hammered on regardless.
The machine is still new to us - although we have had some issues with the Fiery - we really haven't had any problems with the printer. Colour - excellent, Solids - excellent, Halftones - excellent, Registration on every material - excellent, Finishing - excellent.
After 6 months I will return and post further comments - hopefully the experience remains the same.

UPDATE....
Moments after I posted this, the delivery company arrived with the replacement POD Deck Lite XL - I'm anticipating installation tomorrow.

 

[Ynot_UK]

Initially we could only print jobs in duplex (long edge binding) - it took a week or so after installation to realise that this was about print drivers and how Adobe Indesign prints.

Digressing from the topic but this jumped off the page.
Are you using >File>Print from within InDesign as opposed to >File>Export to make a PDF for your RIP?

 

[RoganJosh]

Digressing from the topic but this jumped off the page.
Are you using >File>Print from within InDesign as opposed to >File>Export to make a PDF for your RIP?

That is what we used to do - now we export a pdf and either drop onto Command Workstation or export directly to the hot folder.

 

[Ynot_UK]

That is what we used to do - now we export a pdf and either drop onto Command Workstation or export directly to the hot folder.

Good to hear
I can't think of a good reason for >File >Print even being an InDesign menu option, IMO it can lead new users down the wrong path

 

[Robohopar]

Canon 7/8/900's suck. They should all be destroyed. Can't speak for the 9/10000 series. Heard they're better.

Canon service is only good when you're on their terms and their terms ONLY.

Actual service is decent but why do I need to see these guys here 5 days a week. Why do I need to plead a case every time.

I ended up riding the term out without even using the machine. Just sitting there collecting dust...and my money. Picked up a Konica from POA.