So, the conclusion among most people about my recently acquired Konica C8000 is that I should get rid of it before it causes me more trouble and get something different. I'm running it; but, it has been a struggle with every job to keep the thing going. I just finished 3,000 NCR forms on my large Lexmark office printer because it is far more reliable and has better registration.
My question is, what do I replace the KM C8000 with? I'd really like something from this decade that will print NCR all the way up to 350gsm reliably and affordably...
I'm sure as a printer, you want a machine you can rely on and to know exactly what the all-inclusive costs are. Without that, you cannot cost and price jobs accurately and/or you spend an indiscriminate amount of your own valuable time trying to be an engineer and tinkering with a machine to keep it limping along, distracting from your core business.
That's why it is
absolutely imperative to have a click contract which includes parts, labour and toner - so the only variable is the substrates you print to. When your machine is not working as it should, you call your provider to resolve the issue. Preventative maintenance will be done on schedule and the engineer/s working on your machine will know exactly and quickly what's wrong and what parts are needed, with same or next day access to them.
The 50k/month volume you're clocking is respectable, although you've not indicated the colour/B&W split. You need to decide if you want to take on a new machine, typically leased but not always - we purchased our KM C4080 outright - or if you want to build a relationship with a dealer who will source you a good second user machine which thy will refurb to a standard that they'll put it on a click contract. The latter would likely be an outright purchase like you did with that C8000, but again will be much less dollar than a new machine.
Don't under-estimate the importance of any of the above. The search facility on this forum contains many tales of people buying what looked to be bargains but turned out to be boat anchors, sometimes never working at all. At least you got a few prints out of your C8000 ! There will always be cheap "fully loaded" kit on auction sites and on these forums, peddled by those who see the forums as a free version of Craigslist. The difference in buying your refurb machine from the dealer whom will maintain them under contract, is they're not going to source a problem for themselves.
In addition to our C4080, thanks to some great advice from
@jwheeler on this forum a few years ago, we also have a dedicated B/W machine, a KM Pro-951. This is a great example of what I've talked about above. That has been a fantastic machine, it was sourced by our dealer in 2020, extensively refurbed by the dealer at their workshop before we had it delivered with 1.1m on the billing counter, around 900k of that being A4 (the original owner was a fulfilment warehouse and it was used to print delivery notes, etc. so had an easy life) It now has 2.8m on the billing counter, with over 80% of our usage being A3. We negotiated a very competitive fixed click charge for five years and have enjoyed same/next day service and no down time over 24 hours for the past 2½ years. Could we have found a cheaper second-hand Pro951 ourselves? Absolutely... but it would be a complete unknown, probably have 10 million clicks on it, and no-one would put it on contract, hence it would be a boat anchor.
If taking the new route, look at what the big four have to offer. Although we are KM and I don't see that ever changing, if I were totally new to this and just doing my research, Ricoh would definitely be most interesting to explore in terms of offerings. Xerox have the much publicised drum issues that wreaked unforgiveable havoc for so many digital printers, KM had the toner supply issues following a factory fire which did them no favours, although having a great dealer they buffered against this so fortunately we weren't affected. Whereas Ricoh seem comparatively clean. Also check out Canon's offering.
Good luck!
