Xerox J75 to Xerox Versant 180P Transition

[PricelineNegotiator]

Hello all,

We are being approached by Xerox to upgrade our J75 ahead of our lease agreement's end to a Versant 180P. Does anyone have experience with this machine or feel there are inherent drawbacks? I foresee major upgrades from EFI with the next release cycle, so I am very hesitant to be tied to another machine for 5 years if things will change soon for the RIP. Also waiting on "supported" 350gsm duplex. Your thoughts?

Edit: Also, they said all Windows 8.1 RIPs will be upgraded to Windows 10 soon...has anyone else heard this?

 

[kslight]

I ran one at the demo room before they closed it. I didn't see any drawbacks against our J75s, though it also didn't seem like a massive upgrade. It did do really heavy stock like a champ, but outside of that unless it was a real attractive deal not sure how eager I would be to change.

 

[pippip]

V180 would also be the belt fuser over the roller so envelopes should be no problem.

 

[MailGuru]

V180 is rated to handle 350gsm auto duplex.

 

[Keith]

This past January, I upgraded from a C75 with bustled Fiery to the V180P and I couldn't be happier. Granted, the C75 wasn't as robust as the J75 so it was a bigger difference for me than it will be for you. As pippip said, envelopes run beautifully, no wrinkling even when using cheap envelopes. It does adhesive synthetics, felt, linen, and laid stocks better. Oh, and I was able to print a job for someone that was 7.5" x 24".

I think they saved the 350gsm auto-duplexing for the 3100. The V180P will auto-duplex 350gsm but you may have toner adhesion problems depending upon the stock. What few jobs I have printed at 350gsm have not been a problem manually duplexing because the machine does a great job at putting the image square and centered on the sheet. I don't have to tweak the position when running the backside. I know you already have an external RIP but man, I don't know how I got by all these years without one!

Feel free to PM me with more questions.

 

[wonderings]

You will notice the prints look different. The Versant has a more matted look compared to the J75 which uses oil based toners I believe. The J75 had a glossier print, I prefer the matte look of the Versant myself. We have a 2100 which is similar to the 180, just bigger and a few extra bells and whistles. Been a rock solid machine, consistent colours and great registration.

 

[Keith]

Also, the gradients are better. Less stepping.

 

[pippip]

Never had any experience with the J75 but one huge difference we had from the DC242 to V80 is screens.
Anything below 7-8% never showed on DC242 with the V80 you literally can see 1-2% screens. And all the way up through the scale you can see even the most smallest difference in %.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Any negatives I need to be aware of? I appreciate your responses, guys.

 

[pippip]

I have two main issues with our V80. One is a reoccurring fault with the secondary BTR failing to clean and leaving scuff marks. Sometimes I'll get 150k between changes other times 10k. Xerox acknowledge its a problem and have tried numerous "fixes" and they admit they are baffled. I've been told this carries over to the 180. The roller has been changed to a solid roller rather than soft, like previous. What puzzles them even more the exact same setup is in the 2100/3100 and they tell me it doesn't suffer from it and they don't know why. They are generally out within hours to change it. It generally raises its head whenever I start any longer runs especially on silk/gloss.

The other is banding. I do get lines appearing across the sheet which they claim are normal. if primary colour is black i get it about 30mm from tail edge, if magenta I get a line about 60mm from lead edge with black and yellow in the middle. Visually there on some jobs. They fitted a flywheel to try and prevent it but I still get it and it does bug me.

Maybe others can confirm if they get similar or whether I should be pushing Xerox a bit more.

 

[MailGuru]

Our 2100 does not have any of those problems. Recurring faults with scuff marks, as well as lines across the page are definitely NOT "normal". You should push them to the limit to fix these problems.

Luckily, you are doing business with Xerox. If the machine does not perform in accordance with your CED (Customer Expectation Document), or, there are mechanical issues that result in sub quality prints, that they do not know how to fix, it needs to be escalated up the ladder to the next level of technicians with better expertise.

If they still can not correct the problems, they are under obligation via their maintenance service contract, to pull the machine altogether and replace it with a new one.

This situation has happened to us a few times in the past, with a Xerox DocuColor 8000AP, one of our original V2100's, and a Fiery Hyper RIP. They pulled and replaced them all because they could not figure out how to fix the problem, and, the issue never presented itself again. That guarantee is one of the main reasons that we will ONLY do business with Xerox.

 

[kdw75]

The only thing I feel like you give up is the ability to run glossy toner. We have used the glossy mode setting on our c75 more than once to avoid having to use aqueous coating on a job.

 

[wonderings]

Any negatives I need to be aware of? I appreciate your responses, guys.

Nothing but positives for us when we switched from a J75 to a 2100. We did have a real dud of a J75 and was a year long torture using that machine. Versant has great consistent colour in my experience. Running a booklet right now, first printed it Feb 2017 and looks just about the same today colour wise as it did then. To me that is a miracle when our J75 could shift colour within the hour.

 

[MailGuru]

Replied to the wrong post - Moved to correct post "Chipping........"

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Nothing but positives for us when we switched from a J75 to a 2100. We did have a real dud of a J75 and was a year long torture using that machine. Versant has great consistent colour in my experience. Running a booklet right now, first printed it Feb 2017 and looks just about the same today colour wise as it did then. To me that is a miracle when our J75 could shift colour within the hour.

Actually we do a lot of reprints and I can grab things from 3 years ago with the J75 and they look exactly the same or at least visually very close. Good to know that Xerox kept it up for the V180!

 

[wonderings]

Actually we do a lot of reprints and I can grab things from 3 years ago with the J75 and they look exactly the same or at least visually very close. Good to know that Xerox kept it up for the V180!

I have heard good things about the J75, it was just not our experience. I really think we had a lemon and Xerox eventually after fighting for a year and unable to fix the issues gave us full credit for it as well as a hefty discount on the V2100.

If I did a proof 9 am and it was approved at 10:30 am I would fight to get it to match again, colour was all over the place, calibrated or not.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Final call for any negatives on this press! We're looking at the performance package as we run a lot of tight deadline jobs on 100# cover gloss, along with the 2-knife trimmer and the square-fold + face trimmer. Any input is truly appreciated.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Does anyone have experience with the SIQA on this machine? I never got the SIQA on the J75 to run correctly, so I had always resorted to manually adjusting the registration and skew. How does it handle 13 x 19" sheets with the SIQA?

 

[Keith]

I do! Just like your J75, I couldn't use SIQA on 13 x 19 on my old C75. Got so good at it that I didn't bother to use SIQA on any of the sizes. I always adjusted registration manually. On this machine I have (V180P), SIQA works beautifully on all media. I have not timed myself but I think it takes less than three minutes. You print a sheet, scan it four times and done.

As for any negatives, I finally have one. Yesterday it went down due to waste toner backing up and murdering the gears on the waste toner drive motor. Funny thing is, my C75 did the same exact thing, at the same time - a few months after install. I got this V180P on January 10 and it now has 174,000 impressions. I guess that's not bad for the first service call. The only other negative is the external RIP. Not because of features. I actually love it and don't know how I got by all these years with an embedded RIP. My complaint is that it's over-priced. But that's really hard to say considering EFI has no real competition.

I wanted the performance package for the exact same reason you do, tight deadlines and heavy card stock. Don't really care about anything else on the press, I wanted that speed on card stock. Seriously, my expectations were exceeded in that regard. Probably over 75% of what I print is card stock - business cards, rack cards, post cards, and invitations. Man, I'm gonna sound like I am drowning in Xerox kool-aid but this machine has brought the joy back into printing for me. Lol!

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

An update:

We received the V180P on Monday - this thing is an absolute beast. Registration and image quality are ridiculously good. No fusses for running envelopes, synthetic or 300+ gsm paper. Super pleased so far. Got the Windows 10 RIP and also am able to score up to 5 times on a sheet and output it flat. VERY impressed.

Edit: The only thing that irks me is that the RIP is running a 4th gen Intel i5 and a HDD. EFI get your shit together and get us the 8th gen of Intel i7's in the external RIPs for the Versant series and above, along with m.2 NVMe drives and DDR4 ECC RAM. Very disappointing to see the most profitable company in the industry short change its clients on the hardware. Really only like $750 - $1000 extra in raw material costs per RIP.