Latest iGen 150

Has anybody here have any first hand experience with the latest iGen 150? I Would like to know if they have any known flaws or problems. Any input would be appreciated. How would it go against an Indigo 7000?

 

I've heard the IGen 150 is a little buggy since its still very new. But I can not recall what my Technician said.

 

I have a 150 at my shop. I've had a few issues with it, mostly seem to be relating to transfer issues. Maybe it is just on our machine, but since we got it we've been dealing with issues there. Poly paper is one of our big issues. It ran perfectly fine on our iGen 4, but if you do a job that is a solid color with more than 2 separations in it, it gives weird issues. Anything like photos and such print fine, but just solids not so much.

We had a few things tweaked, timing in a few areas to deal with 26" sheets, and out cyan dev housing was replaced. But it is so much more crisp than our 4, and seems way more than 25% faster.

As far as compared to an Indigo that I couldn't tell ya, I've never dealt with one of those.

 

i'm curious whether you resolved the poly paper issue or not? we are having the same issue, printed fine with the IGen4 but now with the 150 the copy looks fuzzy, pics look fine. been working on the detacks etc but are NOT having any luck.

 

It pretty much fixed itself over time. I think it needed to get worked in a bit, and then the kinks kind of sorted themselves out. We run Xerox poly stocks 12x18 with nothing within 1/2" of the edges, which gives best results. We actually just tried another brand of poly paper and it printed terribly.

Controlled environment seems to help as well, and higher humidity, but as far as tweaking the detack and transfer settings, I use the stock attributes from Xerox for their poly and it seems to be working a lot better now.

Those settings would make the problem worse, and if you went in the other direction it didn't make it any better. Hopefully the same pans out for you, and it fixes itself.

Try tests of just 1 color, then try a 2 color mix, and then go to 3 colors. That's where we noticed the problem. 100% of magenta would be fine, and add in say cyan and you were good, but introduce yellow over a solid fill and not a photo and problems began.

 

The 150 gave me headaches for about the first 4 months or so, then it became a god-like creature (for the most part). It takes a lot to settle in and get going. I too had cyan issues that required a new dev housing.

Solids are kind of tricky, especially if you're having to do large swatches of light greys. Streaky as hell.

I started off with a 150, so I can't really compare it to 3s,4s or Indigos, but I really like the 150 about 90% of the time. Color consistency has been solid and as long as the paper isn't too weird or crappy, she runs most stuff pretty smoothly. Only issue I'm having is I go through PR belts pretty quick, but a lot of that I think is the rapid stock changes we do here. Anytime I ask the tech about that he just shrugs and orders more belts.

 

We also go through belts far more than we should, but the main culprit for deciding to go bad are the fusers. We burn through fusers like nobody's business. The first fuser I put in lasted me 2 to 3 times as long as my old 4's fusers did, but since then they last like 1/2 that time. I typically replace the fuser one to two times a week, and trust me the volumes I run shouldn't go through them that quickly.

The issues seem to be build up on the external rolls, especially running a lot of uncoated stock. The web pulls off 2x as much toner as it does with coated, but spins at the same speed so it builds up and melts onto the external rolls which then start to muck up the fuser.

Otherwise the machine has been great. A few dev housing issues, but not to the point of replacement yet. And a few power supply issues that took a long time to track down, but we've moved locations and the machine is running great.