Thought I'd share my experiences with one of the previously mentioned 100ppm machines, one of the more expensive options... We had the machine installed in mid June and it's been a battle ever since, but I'll start off with the positives.
The quality of the prints is fantastic, service is prompt, and the mph is great.
Now the bad. I say mph instead of ppm because if you take the 100ppm and do all the math to get the pages/hour you end up with being able to print 1,000 Duplex Tabloid sized pages in about 40 minutes. But in actual experience the machine will do it in about 1 hour 20 minutes, if you're lucky enough for it to not jam. The problem is the constant Adjusting Image Quality routine the machine does. Granted, this was when it was in an uncontrolled environment. But we've seen this message appear too often even after having built a controlled environment for the machine. The real problem with the Adjusting Image Quality routine is that when it happens in the middle of a print job, colors will shift, sometimes dramatically. We had an issue where printing a job with a blue (leaning towards cyan) box after printing 40 sheets, the AIQ routine happened, and the box was now purple.
Now the jams. Lots of jams. We laid out our expectations of being able to print preprinted shells off our press on the machine. And they said it would be fine if we kept the spray powder to a minimum. Even after dusting the sheets and trying to run them through the machine, nothing but jams. Until you find the right voodoo of fanning and rolling the paper before placing it in the machine. Most of our shells are 100# Gloss Cover. But even on 70# Opaque Text Shells there is still too many jams and voodoo needed to get it to run properly. Also because of the feed mechanism there are some other non shell papers that we simply can't get to feed without jams, or doubles (even sometimes feeding 10 sheets at the same time into the paper path, 10! ). The feed mechanism is the same as every desktop printer ever produced, one small feed roller, and some extra rollers that are supposed to prevent double feeds but never do. And they don't provide an option of a more robust suction feed system.
Hardware issues. We've had numerous circuit boards replaced, a whole center section of the machine paper path/imaging area replaced, and lots of motors replaced. It's actually surprising when we can run the machine for two days straight.
Software issues. There's a lot of what appears to be a loss of communication between the RIP and the print controller. Lots of losing the print status, where the machine is printing but there's no indicator of how far along in the job you are. Errors that will cause the machine to just stop printing. And if you're clearing a jam, often the machine will just decide to turn its self off, losing your place in the job. Also we had the Clear Toner option installed. Expect lots of software issues with trying to use that and the RIP. It seems they can't handle the overprint of the spot clear channel and any transparency in the file. Basically it's a lot of testing and hoping that you don't miss something that the RIP has decided it doesn't want to print. Anything from text boxes to images, to whole pages. And when possible we have to do imposition before sending to the machine, otherwise doing imposition in the RIP software will sometimes cause all sorts of rendering issues (missing lines, pages, etc.). The manufacturer of the machine took our sample files that were causing repeatable issues in late June and still have not provided a solution, a status, or any kind of information of when or even if a fix was going to be available.
Speaking of the Clear Toner option. It's basically the same as the other toners without any pigment in it. Meaning it has the same gloss to it as the process. So if you're looking to add a varnish like effect to anything with more than 80% coverage the effect will be minimal if you even notice it at all. I would not recommend the option, unless you have a very specific use case for it.
Documentation issues. Don't expect to be able to fix anything yourself. Next to ~90% of the error codes in the documentation they provide is "Reboot machine. If this doesn't solve your problem call service." Don't expect to even know what's causing an issue. If you have a paper jam, you have almost no idea of what's causing it to jam. You get an error code, and no information on it at all. And the Customer Support line can never help. You're always going to have to have a visit from a Tech.
Billing issues. We're being billed for metered supplies, tax is added to invoices, and the agreed upon lease start date apparently never made it to the billing department as they tried to charge us for a couple extra months.
We've had meetings with the Sales, Service and Software managers and all of these issues have been brought up and explained in great detail. They've promised solutions, but have not given a timeline on anything.
Now, we have had the machine installed for less than three months, and maybe these are just teething problems. But if we can't rely on a machine, we'll never be able to grow our digital business. Hopefully these issues get resolved, and I'll report back when/if anything happens. But we're currently looking to make a switch to Konica, or even Canon, and definitely a Creo RIP.
