xante digital presses

What kind of feedback on these digital presses. Anybody give good insight?

 

Re Xante Digital Press

I can't stress enough how crappy and unreliable this equipment is.
Toner is unbelievably expensive (about $900 for a CMYK set) and it can only print a few thousand envelopes (now... think about the ink coverage on an envelope, it almost NOTHING! compare to the ISO standard for an letter size sheet; yet, this printer only gives you a few thousand impressions)
Worst money I have ever spent in my life!

Would highly discourage ANYONE from buying this type of equipment. So, please research carefully.
Good luck

 

Toner cost is what kept me from getting one.
But I give xante great respect for giving me honest and good information up front -- I requested print samples and cost per print information and they provided a dozen different print samples with cost per print identified for each one. It would only work out for me if coverage were very very light or if my budget per print were noticeably more

There was talk a couple years ago about Ikon selling a version of the xante / oki envelope press. Did anything ever happen with that and did it come with a click contract in that form?

 

totally gone off xante, even their platemakers are ****, they all use hp engines anyway, the platemakers even use hp c3900 toners which hp havent used since the 4 and 5 series printers in the late 80s. before xante left hp and joined oki they were the best around but things have moved on and their reputation has gone downhill rapidly ever since

 

I've looked at the xante oki printers a few times now. In my view they are unique but the niche they fill is quite specific. For me, one would be handy when the job is to print quantities of 5 - 150 event rack cards heavy card boards / signs / etc. Or when doing a run of mail merged envelopes in the 100 to 1000 quantity.

What other option is there if you want to print small quantities on 500 gsm board?
An example would be signs that don't need to be mounted on separate foam/board.

Or if you want to print 47.5" x 12.9"?
On one hand it's 3x to 4x the cost per print of Xerox, KM, Canon, etc. contract printers. On the other hand, it's 8x cheaper than running the prints on a large format epson or hpz inkjet printer. An example of this niche would be 100 short-short run dust jackets.

So far though, it would have been really handy for a few mockups that I've done recently, and I've looked at it when two or three of these "niche" short run projects have come my way where it was either thick stock or a dimension over 19", small quantity, and fast turnaround since I don't have a solution for them at present; but I don't have enough of them to make it profitable for me to have one to date.