Xerox 700 v/ DC252

[goodlands]

I am thinking of getting into the digital print business, primarily to offer customized and/or personalized high photographic quality products such as calendars and photo books. We have a wealthy tourist market where I live - Mauritius - and no such service exists to date.

General commercial printing of business cards, short-run postcards for hotels, restaurant menus and corporate brochures will also be part of the service.

I have no experience in digital document printing but have been a screen-printer for over 30 years and a digital large format dye-sublimation printer for the past 10 years. I am also a professional photographer and require the highest output quality.

My question is whether the improved front-to-back registration, better paper handling and general ease of operation of the 700 would justify the extra cost compared to the older 252? Apart from the above features I gather that the 700 and DC252 print a similar image quality @ 2400 x 2400 dpi

I would appreciate your advice.

 

[lfelton]

There's a wealth of information from people already using these machines and who have evaluated them already on this board. If you haven't already, then it's well worth using the "search" facility to review them.

There's a couple of things that I can tell you that may help.

When we were using a 250 (pretty much exactly the same as the 252), we had problems with greys and shadows in photographs. We upgraded to use the X-Rite spectrophotometer and this significantly helped. They are still not perfect though and you will need to work hard to achieve and maintain a high standard. As far as I know the 700 is exactly the same print engine. Our newer KM 6501 (with the full FACI/graphics art kit) is better still, but again not perfect and I don't think that you will get real "near contone photographic" quality without using a wider colour gamut, i.e. a 6-colour Indigo or just possibly the new Konica C65hc (according to Printweek that was released this week?) . Having said that, we have a lot of photographers as regular clients, so it really depends on your expectations.

The 250 really does not like coated stock and will not duplex it at all. I understand that the 700 has much improved paper handling, so if you need to use coated (i.e. gloss, silk) then this may be the clincher for the 700.

You need to get hold of the CED for both machines. The front to back registration tolerances are in there. You should believe these. You should ignore what your salesperson says. You should ignore well meaning people who say "I managed to get our machine within..." Stick to the CED. Xerox certainly will.

Finally, you really need to consider a RIP with the capability of profiling your own papers. Without this, you don't have any real hope of colour accuracy. I believe that both the 252 and 700 have RIP options that offer this.

I hope that helps!

 

[smatros]

700 has better grays then dc252. on the other hand there are still several problems with software, registration and color stability on heavier coated stocks.
700 also has much smaller material handling capacity, but prints are more matte, offset like.
700 has some similarities with the 25x range, but it has different toner / fuer / paper handling. It will be a good machine, once the initial problems are sorted, so maybe for the first year you are safer with DC250.
You will probably need a good order tracking and esitmating system for your job. We have developed our own, if interrested let me know by PM.

 

[goodlands]

Thanks Ifelton and Smatros. I have followed your previous posts on similar subject and appreciate your comments as you obviously have plenty of experience with these types of machines.

Being where I am I will only consider the Xerox as the local supplier is very good and, more importantly, has also been using a 250 for the past 2/3 years in a commercial environment - print bureau - and can properly service the printer.

The local release date for the 700 is still a few months away (!) and they are offering me a good deal on the 252 - less 25% from original offer - so maybe I should take it...

Meanwhile I will continue to monitor this forum and when time comes I will contact Smatros for the tracking/estimating system

 

[X33]

I don't know how flexible the financing and upgrade situations are in your local market with Xerox, but if you were in the U.S., I'd say start with the Xerox DC252, when business grows, move up to a Xerox 700

 

[sweatyclimber]

As a photographer myself and having a client who was one of the first to get photo processing digital in the USA I would also offer some advice... the "highest quality output required" is something you need to consider... I've seen many photographers get bogged down on this verse... what can you sell. My 1st usa digital photo processing lab client used to compare older color copiers to her fuji photo's or the hp Indigo. It took a while for them to realize that what mattered is what the client would buy.

I would make sure you have some good and diverse test charts and then test files... Do lots of demo's and then between the two... go with the 252... w/ the fiery and tray alignment you can get the front to back registration where you'll need it.

 

[rsands]

once the dc250 is in alignment it does stay there very well even while mixing media types alot. Once it goes out though its some fun getting it back on - we had to have the Xerox engineer install a special device available in the UK which someone designed to fix it (outside of Xerox). it works well and has kept our machine on target.

Good machine all round but forget about greys...they aren't too bad when the RIP does RGB to CMYK though.

 

[goodlands]

You guys seem unanimous in recommending the 252 as a first step.

And sweatyclimber thanks for reminding me of the first rule of business - what will the customer pay for? The other Xerox machine doing commercial printing here - a 250 series - has been going non-stop for the past 3 years and customers keep coming back..

 

[SLGraphics]

intrested in the tracking and esitmating system,

intrested in the tracking and esitmating system,

700 has better grays then dc252. on the other hand there are still several problems with software, registration and color stability on heavier coated stocks.
700 also has much smaller material handling capacity, but prints are more matte, offset like.
700 has some similarities with the 25x range, but it has different toner / fuer / paper handling. It will be a good machine, once the initial problems are sorted, so maybe for the first year you are safer with DC250.
You will probably need a good order tracking and esitmating system for your job. We have developed our own, if interrested let me know by PM.

I'm getting the 700, and was reading up on the pros and cons, and came across your
input.
Tell me more about this tracking and esitmating system?
Call if you can 619-864-5399

 

[PineyBob]

EFI controls about 80% of the market for Printing Industry MIS. From Print Smith through to Hagen, they offer some pretty nice off the shelf solutions.

With all of these systems including the do it yourself one you need to have a very strong handle on your costs otherwise you get some weird stuff out. It takes time to build the system but it is worth it in the end.

Check out EFI and see what you think

 

[che.c]

...we had to have the Xerox engineer install a special device available in the UK which someone designed to fix it (outside of Xerox). it works well and has kept our machine on target.

Special Device? Special Device?! I run a 250 and a 260 and would be very interested to hear about that. Recently the 250 isn't printing square, I have to split the difference when I'm aligning the trays..

 

[rsands]

thats the exact problem we had...it went really off square. i clean forget the name of it (he left the manual behind him for it at the time). Its a white plastic oval that they fit to the imaging unit which basically props it up at one side and fixes that issue...they adjust it like 1mm at a time and it brings it into line.

Its not promoted by Xerox though...just our engineer is good at his job