which digital presses have shortest delay inserting tabs and other mixed media?

[bcr]

Currently using two Ricoh C5310's. Printing lots of A4 and A5 tab sheets.

There is about a 7 second delay when the printer switches from printing office paper to printing a tab., and then same delay switching back to office paper.

Ricoh said this is due to the machine entirely clearing the paper path before switching to tabs. IIRC they used the term 'skipped frames'.

So I'm just wondering which digital presses on the market nowadays have the shortest delay whilst switching between regular paper and tabs? Can anyone beat 7 seconds?

I've seen the Ricoh C9200, and that had zero delay switching from paper to tab, but a similar delay of 6 seconds or so when switching back to paper after tabs.

In some runs where there are lots of pages in between the tabs, the delay is not so bad. But on runs where the tabs separate very short documents, it kills productivity. On those runs we will often print the documents with slipsheets as covers and insert the tabs by hand. If we expand in future, I might look at machines which can insert the tabs faster.

 

[kslight]

I think if you are printing the tabs at the same time, most machines will have this delay as it warms up / cools down to change media type.


However, if you preprint the tabs, and then put them in a post fuser paper tray, it should not have this delay. I have a Ricoh 7210 with the cover interposer module, which I use to insert preprinted pieces all the time without delays. These two trays don’t hold a lot so it would not be practical for inserting lots of tabs, but they do sell larger interposer trays, I believe they can be added to your printer as well.

 

[bcr]

I think if you are printing the tabs at the same time, most machines will have this delay as it warms up / cools down to change media type.


However, if you preprint the tabs, and then put them in a post fuser paper tray, it should not have this delay. I have a Ricoh 7210 with the cover interposer module, which I use to insert preprinted pieces all the time without delays. These two trays don’t hold a lot so it would not be practical for inserting lots of tabs, but they do sell larger interposer trays, I believe they can be added to your printer as well.

thanks for this. I understand from what Ricoh have told me, that it's not about adjusting temperature, it's about clearing the paper path entirely before changing the stock between plain paper and tab.

i have a dual tray cover interposer. it's of limited use though.. if we need to use the in-line multipunch then putting post-inserted tabs through the punch seems to cause jams later in the finisher. and also doing it this way you have to keep checking that the tabs remain in sequence with the documents.

imagine you are printing 1000 different documents with their own individual tab as a label, but something goes wrong and the tabs are fed out of sequence... carnage.

 

[jwheeler]

We regularly run manuals that go into 3-ring binders which can be 200-600 pages, with 5-25 divider tabs, and sometimes a 3rd stock for special sections. Our C6085 doesn't skip a beat when switching medias. However, our C7090 (which is supposed to be the new generation of the C6085) pauses several seconds between medias. We've timed running the same projects on each and the C6085 is almost half the time.

We run even more manuals in b/w on our KM 6136's and those don't have a pause between the medias.

 

[SoggyWinter]

Our Xerox Versant 3100 does not skip a beat switching media in "speed mode".

 

[kslight]

thanks for this. I understand from what Ricoh have told me, that it's not about adjusting temperature, it's about clearing the paper path entirely before changing the stock between plain paper and tab.

i have a dual tray cover interposer. it's of limited use though.. if we need to use the in-line multipunch then putting post-inserted tabs through the punch seems to cause jams later in the finisher. and also doing it this way you have to keep checking that the tabs remain in sequence with the documents.

imagine you are printing 1000 different documents with their own individual tab as a label, but something goes wrong and the tabs are fed out of sequence... carnage.

I use our cover inserter with the inline 3 hole punch and it doesn’t jam, the only problem is capacity, but for my use it’s sufficient.

I am aware of the potential nightmare of inserting precollated material, I used to do this all night at a previous employer. Eventually we switched to inserting oversized slip sheets, running two up, and inserting by hand, but that printer we used didn’t have an inline punch, modern feeders, etc.


What happens if you tell the printer that the tab stock and regular job paper are the same weight just different trays?

 

[bcr]

I use our cover inserter with the inline 3 hole punch and it doesn’t jam, the only problem is capacity, but for my use it’s sufficient.

I am aware of the potential nightmare of inserting precollated material, I used to do this all night at a previous employer. Eventually we switched to inserting oversized slip sheets, running two up, and inserting by hand, but that printer we used didn’t have an inline punch, modern feeders, etc.


What happens if you tell the printer that the tab stock and regular job paper are the same weight just different trays?

Don't think I've tried the same weight but there's a big difference in weight between 80gsm paper and thick tab sheets. I'm concerned that might lead to more misfeeds etc.

I found a setting in the service menu though which apparently prioritises speed over quality with mixed media. Will test that out tomorrow

 

[bcr]

We regularly run manuals that go into 3-ring binders which can be 200-600 pages, with 5-25 divider tabs, and sometimes a 3rd stock for special sections. Our C6085 doesn't skip a beat when switching medias. However, our C7090 (which is supposed to be the new generation of the C6085) pauses several seconds between medias. We've timed running the same projects on each and the C6085 is almost half the time.

We run even more manuals in b/w on our KM 6136's and those don't have a pause between the medias.

Yeah it kills the productivity, right?
Imagine when you have hundreds of docs that are just 1-2 pages long between tabs. Urgh!!

 

[bcr]

Update:

So i tried changing the setting

"SP1-131-001 Feed Permit Condition" to 'Productivity Priority' instead of 'Fusing Priority'.


That is outlined in a document from Ricoh re. the c9200 in this thread here: https://printplanet.com/threads/ricoh-9100-slip-sheets-and-speed.278680/#post-278691
Apparently this setting has a similar effect on my C5310's.

The outcome:

- When printing a tab sheet in between regular 80gsm paper, there is no longer any delay before inserting the tab.
There is however a 7 second delay before it switches back to printing onto regular 80gsm paper.

But before changing this setting there was a 7 second delay before inserting a tab, and a 7 second delay after inserting. So this is a dramatic improvement. I'll try tweaking paper weight and other settings next to see if that helps further.

 

[bcr]

Further update:

much success!

In addition to the fuser priority setting change, I created a new custom tab paper using the same settings as regular 80gsm a4 office paper.

Findings:

- If printing simplex sheets in between tabs there is zero noticeable delay.
- if printing duplex sheets in betweent tabs, there is a delay of 3.7 seconds after printing a tab before the regular paper arrives at the output tray.

I will have to test this extensively to see if lying about paper weight has any implications for things like misfeeds, especially with use of the multipunch unit.

But - so far, I am gobsmacked. I have gone from having a total delay of about 14 seconds either side of inserting a tab, to just 3.7 seconds.
So where before printing 1000 tabs in between documents would have caused about a four hour delay, it's now down to about one hour. For smaller runs, it's barely noticeable, and I don't think any human could manually locate and insert a tab into a large bundle in 3.7 seconds.

When the specialists at Ricoh HQ gave me a demo on several machines specifically re. tabs, they assured me they had optimised everything fully for tab printing. None of them were this fast. I've had techs look at the configs as well to try to reduce the delay. None of them managed this either.

 

[Dmiller35]

Ricoh color machines seem to be pretty terrible when switching between stocks. Maybe the latest generation has gotten better but on our old 9110s, there was a huge delay between sheets unless we told it the other stock was the same paper and used the same profile. Our B&W Ricoh's are much better. Even with I've never had another machine that was this difficult with stock switching.
We have a 7210 but we don't do much mixed media printing on it so I can't comment on how it handles it.

 

[DBaker]

Further update:

much success!

In addition to the fuser priority setting change, I created a new custom tab paper using the same settings as regular 80gsm a4 office paper.

Findings:

- If printing simplex sheets in between tabs there is zero noticeable delay.
- if printing duplex sheets in betweent tabs, there is a delay of 3.7 seconds after printing a tab before the regular paper arrives at the output tray.

I will have to test this extensively to see if lying about paper weight has any implications for things like misfeeds, especially with use of the multipunch unit.

But - so far, I am gobsmacked. I have gone from having a total delay of about 14 seconds either side of inserting a tab, to just 3.7 seconds.
So where before printing 1000 tabs in between documents would have caused about a four hour delay, it's now down to about one hour. For smaller runs, it's barely noticeable, and I don't think any human could manually locate and insert a tab into a large bundle in 3.7 seconds.

When the specialists at Ricoh HQ gave me a demo on several machines specifically re. tabs, they assured me they had optimised everything fully for tab printing. None of them were this fast. I've had techs look at the configs as well to try to reduce the delay. None of them managed this either.

I used to do this on a Ricoh 9200, primarily when printing booklets inline with covers on an higher weight stock. I never had any issues with it causing jams or misfeeds. Sometimes I worried about toner adhesion on thick book covers so i would usually find a gsm that was the middle ground between the different stocks I was using in one run. Never noticed any issues doing that.