How much better is xerox 700 than docucolor 260?

Anyone upgrade from a docucolor 260 to a 700? What does the 700 add to your print arsenal?

 

Better duplex registration within 1mm vs. 1.5mm
Option for an output stacker
Second OHCF air-assist feeder drawer

 

i think monthly capacity is a big difference as well, the 260 are not really full out production machines, i have heard numbers around 50k for the 260 and 75-100k for the 700. I also believe that there is some difference in the size of the imaging drums, 260 drums being smaller, so even a small dent can cause 3-5 spots on your print, with the 700 you might only see that spot twice.

 

We ran dc250 and changed to X700. After some 70.000 prints and 3 months we still hava major problems. The registration / alignment has serious issues with loosing the settings, the 1 mm is pure theory.
Colors are inconsistent. Due to fuser problems prints on coated materials are very poor. Comparing to the 250 the range of materials is pretty smaller - the majority of special offset papers, that preformed ok on dc250 are now unusable. Currently I believe the machine was placed on market too soon due to Xerox pressure to present it at Drupa and several solutions still need to be figured in Xerox labs.

 

Xerox 700 is not worth it

Were using the color press 700 and about to give it back. Xerox lured us into this machine claiming the quality is better than the 240-260 series. False advertising! It may run ok on regular 24-28 lb bond, but as soon as your run any coated, silk, paper or card stocks you will never acheive good results. Colors jump all over the place, banding lines that can not be resolved, registration problems galore, modeling on any heavy toner coverage, anything on a coated stock has a faded look with not enough toner coverage.
Tecnician is here 3 times a week, the duty cycle is not what they claim. If your luck you get 10 K on a duty cycle not 75 K as they claim. Not a production machine by any means.
My advice, to anyone thinking about this machine is do not even listen to them and the bogus about it. The machine was released way to soon, and they still can not fix the problems.
We've been using a 252 for 3+ years now and were very happy with it.

 

Its true that fuser problems and prints on coated materials are very poor but that is becuase of the speed and kind of toner some people think that 700 is a better 260 and that is not true, 700 is for prints on heavy paper and for large jobs and you have to print in recommended media

 

in 700 speed is fast , print engine same, only the speed and HCF is exist

 

The Xerox DC 700 does suffer from poor densities on high substrates and isn't a scratch on the DC252 engines. This is due to a problem with the speed of the engine, it is after all just a uprated 250. If this isn't important to you then the better registration and speed will compensate for this. The toner is different too and will cause print quality problems once the toner has saturated the developer. So is it worth the money? when the Xerox boys sort out the quality issues then yes, hands down better than the 250 model.

If you are going to buy make sure you get some sample jobs done, whilst you are with the sales rep I must add, so you can see the output. Just bear in mind it gets worse over a long run.

For better output consider the DC5000, has great colour and paper handling, cost is off putting though.

Regards.

Xerographic International Ltd

 

Well i understand that dc5000 is an hybrid of the combination of dc250 and dc 8000 but i about the prices and benefits how can we compare for example dc250 in my country cost about 50,000 the DC 700 about 65,000 i guess and dc5000 90,000 i think its better 2 dc250 but i tell you that i dont meet the dc5000 we dont have any here in Nicaragua

 

that's true, it is a hybrid, but a good one. Second hand in the UK they retail for about £40K which for a machine of that output is very good. Having 2 x DC250's is also a very good idea, as one breaks the other is still running but at twice the price per click it can be an expensive option. I am a great fan of the 250 engine though and the DC700 does struggle with high density colour on long runs, I suspect it's the limitation of the toner/fuser.

If you can get your hands on a good quality second hand 5252 then these machines are reliable and go on forever. Well worth the investment.

Xerographic International

 

@printmaster, I don't know who services your 700, but I'm glad they don't service mine.

I've had my 700 since December 2008, and I wouldn't give it up for anything. I run the heck out of it all all sort of stocks, and rarely does it give me any trouble. It's not uncommon for me to do of run of 7-8000 clicks on 12x18 coated stock, and number 8000 looks identical to number 1. As far as registration, its so usually so close for me it's unmeasurable; if it is off I just adjust it in CW5 and it doesn't budge. The other day I ran a run of 8k 12x18s on a coated stock with 100% coverage and a lot of dark green, and there was no mottling at all and the colors were vivid.

I see my tech maybe once every 75k clicks, as I usually install my own drums and fusers. The last set of drums I used, I only replaced because it made me. The outputs looked perfect. 8/10 of my service calls have been on the IT side, trying to keep scan-to-pc desktop working with our jacked up network.

I've seen the 260's though, and if you don't need the volume, a 260 might be the machine for you. I hope to replace my KMBS 920 with a 260.

My only regret was getting the bustled Fiery, but I couldn't swing the external for just an inhouse printshop.

 

I'd agree with austinsa,

I've had my 700 for over a year and have only seen the engineer once in 6 months. We hammer it all day. any stock and coating. Clients include car manufacturers and governament agencies, all demand colour consistency.

We had a 242, There is no comparision on registration colour and performance.

Love it and will be getting a 2nd soon to back this one up.

Cheers

 

Was impressed, but no longer.

We have a DC 250 with a bustled Fiery, and it's a great machine except for the per click charge. Also the 250 won't duplex heavy stock internally which is a problem.

The 700, seemed like a good alternative and at first it was when brand new. However over the last couple of months it has become problematic. The biggest issue I have the the 700 is that the inside of the machine around the transfer belt gets filthy with toner scatter, and so far we've had to have several other belts and drives replaced because they get out of sync and break.

As for color registration, I think it does a good job for the capacity and speed of the machine, but it does have an issue with fishtailing long stock which our technician says cannot be corrected. I do feel that prints from the 250 look better, and if the 250 would duplex heavy stock with out jamming, I would not have bothered with the 700.

I like the 700 but it's not as smart as the folks at Xerox think it is. The machine will show that there is 50% life left on a drum, and it'll already be streaking or banding. The 700 also has issues with duplexing where it will have streaks on the back side of a print, but not the front.

Due to our lease, the 700 is cheaper to operate than our 250, but in the end, the quality doesn't seem to be as good. I'm also a little surprised that our External Fiery on the 700, only has 384MB of ram I don't know who thought that was a good idea.

 

rodyoung

We are a commercial offset shop looking to take the plunge into digital. Looking at the XEROX700. Any advice would be considered. Have not signed anything yet. We want to move small format work off our offset presses to cut our operating cost and production time.

 

Be careful.

I would hope that, by now, Xerox has all the problems with the 700 lined out. However, looking back at the logs of our 700, I see that it has had more than 35 service calls in the last year. While 99% of the service calls have been able to correct the problems, the machine still has several issues that make it unacceptable for certain jobs.

Let me break these issues down, and hopefully if you have a demo of the 700 these issues will be addressed.
1. Coverage/Gloss on coated or uncoated paper: To be honest, OUR 700 has never provided a good solid coverage on any large solid area. It covers, well enough, but if you have a 2 inch by 2 inch square which should be any solid color, it looks splotchy and dry in spots. Compared to the 250 which generally gives a nice solid, slick coverage.
2. Jams: Our 700 is sitting on concrete, and has had additional brackets installed to hold the machine in a fixed position, so the different sections don't get out of alignment. Unfortunately that is not enough to prevent it from misfeeding and jamming on certain paper. The machine simply hates coated or glossy paper fed from any source. It's infuriating.
3. Skew: The 700 only has a digital skew adjustment of 1mm in either direction. Because the machine tends to fishtail 11X17 paper, there isn't enough adjustment to completely remove all the skew on a duplex print. If the machine didn't fishtail the paper, then the skew adjustment would be enough, but in our situation, it fishtails, and sometimes it's up to 3mm of skew.
4. External Fiery: I've used Fiery rips for years now, and they have been solid devices. The EX700 Rip on our 700 is under powered for a production press, and with only 384 megabytes of memory, it has to work pretty hard on big 12X18 prints.
5. IBT Belts: Apparently these are made of tissue paper, and become scarred and damaged if you run a lot of 80# cover stock.
6. Toner Scatter: After roughly 80K prints, the inside of the machine gets covered in toner. Our Xerox techs can't figure out why, and have to come in regularly to clean out the machine because the sensors get coated and the machine throws a fault.

I suppose it's possible that our 700 is just a piece of junk. I believe like many others that the 700 was pushed to market too soon, and those of us that got a machine early on were cursed with a machine that wasn't ready for primetime.

Other complaints about Xerox equipment that I would have to warn any potential customer about must include, Xerox's new service call system, which has only recently been implemented and while it's nice to be speaking with someone from Nova Scotia instead of India, their service call processing system is still broken and confused their tech, not to mention their customers.

Also, I'm considering an MGI DP40, or DP60 simply because none of our Xerox machines will print on envelopes. We have a 700EX Digital press, Docucolor 250, WorkCenter 7435, and Workcenter 245, and they are all incapable of printing envelopes, and although they claim to be able to, none of them will print transparencies either.

You'll also have trouble with service on the 700, because techs that can service 250s, or smaller machines generally can't service the 700 or above.

 

Envelopes - try open flap 9.5 wide across machine - shortest it allows lengthwise something like 5.6 or 5.62 , rotate 180 degrees so flaps are trailing, will be dependent on envelope. #10's are most likely too short depends on the flap, we can manage #11's. Use a used fuser with damage outside the print area.

Transparencies - must be clear not the white strip (on our 240).

Ken

 

After spending the day with a Level 2 tech on our 700, I have to say that the salesperson responsible for selling us this machine, and even the level 2 techs until recently, were not aware of the capability of the machine.

1. As far as the splotchy dry coverage, there is a user adjustable setting to change the charge voltage, which once changed, will make the prints from the 700 look as slick and solid as the DC250. Unfortunately it's a time consuming adjustment, full of trial and error, but it is possible to eliminate the mottled look of solid colors on uncoated stock. At this point I'm considering eliminating the Dc250 since the 700 is capable of making solid slick prints.

2. After the tech placed the 700 on what are essentially adjustable jack stands, and adjusted the "air assist" it no longer double feeds 80# glossy text from our Large Capacity drawer.

3. The machine still fishtails 17" paper beyond the digital skew adjustment, but mainly only does this out of the bypass tray.

4. There is a "mottling patch" which must be enabled, to help eliminate the mottling, most level 1 techs don't even know about it.

5. The user can adjust the toner usage quantities to also help with coverage, which all goes to the end print quality.

6. The procedure for "Calibrating" the machine is still not possible using a computer, and the built in software on the 700. There are a total of 12-13 steps, and you can't do it with the ColorWise Pro Tools. (It would have been nice to know that from day one.)

With the number of corrections and adjustments made today by a very skilled Technician, the colors are right, the coverage is solid and the solids are smooth with no mottling. At this point I'm certainly much happier with the machine, however I was also given this news:

1. Because we run a lot of 80# cover stock of various sizes, our IBT belt probably won't last more than 80,000 prints.
2. Because we run 8.5X11, 11X17 and 12X18 out of this machine, we should keep three fuser modules. One fuser for each specific size paper.

This last thing makes my eye twitch, I understand the reasoning behind it, but in the end, it seems like it would be better for Xerox to build a fuser that wouldn't scar because of heavy weight paper edges.

Speaking of edges, I still can't understand why these machines won't print to the edge of the paper. Even the the level 2 tech didn't understand.

 

Really appreciate hearing your experiences with your 700.

Is it easy to change this fuser as with the 250? (just lift out and set in on a couple of pins?) If so, I don't see it as a big issue. The xerox fusers have been a lot more durable and resistant to lines/dents/etc. than canon color fusers IMO.

That was one of my first questions when we started with lasers. At that time the answer was basically that the bleed toner that would have to be printed beyond the edge of the sheet would then end up getting on the edges of the underside of the next sheet. A robust cleaning mechanism would be necessary, and the complication would be more costly than using the paper as the bleed throwaway. Would be nice for short short runs though to save the trim time.

 

Because of our service contract for metered supplies, the machine is cheap to run. Xerox (thankfully) moved their service call center from India (or where ever it was) to Nova Scotia, where they mostly speak english. I have to admit that I'm a hillbilly and sometimes over the phone, I have difficulty understanding "Mike" who was obviously told to use that name because it sounds American, because Americans couldn't pronounce "Mike's" real name.

I digress... Yes, swapping the fusers out is as easy as the DC250, and as far as the cost, our contract means we call and ask for fusers and they send them to us, so it's not more expensive to change fusers for the different width paper, but it does mean I have to get up and change the fuser every other job. That's a little annoying.

The edge to edge printing still seems a little silly. Yes, it would mean that the transfer belt would have to have a better cleaning system, but the drums all have adequate cleaners. Yes, it may mean that because of the electrosatic nature of transferring the toner to the paper that some toner would end up on the edge of the sheet, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't bother me. Also it would increase the amount of waste toner, but again, I'm not talking about even a thousand sheets. Something as simple as blowing up a photo to 8.5X11 without having a white border around it, or having to spend 2 minutes at the cutter trimming it.

Honestly, they shouldn't be allowed to use the term "full bleed". My Ryobi's are full bleed, these Xerox machines (and also the Minolta machines from my past) aren't full bleed.

I should also add that a lot of the problems I have had with the 700 stem from having a very critical eye on the quality of my print jobs. Spots, voids, scuffs, banding or any defect isn't tolerated. Everyone in our shop feels the same way. We can spot something crooked or out of alignment from across the room. Duplex prints need to be point perfect, so even printing something as silly as a duplex sheet of vellum with a grid on both sides, the grids must match. The 700 has never demonstrated this ability. Where as I can have my Ryobi press operator produce 100,000 copies that are dead on. Yes, I know comparing a multi-head offset press to a large beige plastic box is a little silly, but wouldn't it be nice if one of these digital machines had 10 print drums, 5 for front side, 5 for back, so that the paper didn't have to be flipped? I think they've proven they can't flip the paper over without it drifting.

 

wait -- what is this? i've been dying trying to find the "gloss" setting that we had come to like so much on the 250. would my tech know about this?

your situation parallels ours to an almost scary point. it sounds like all of the same issues we've had, and yet to rectify. i'll give your experiences a test with our guy, though.