OKI CX3641 vs C9650 for Envelope and 65lb Matte Cover

Does anybody know what the differences are between the OKI CX3641 and C9650? I can't seem to figure it out but I haven't seen samples so I'm wondering if that's where the difference lies.

Any info on either of these printers would be mucho helpful. Here are our numbers:

Annual production:
377,000 Monochrome Clicks on 18lb Stock
60,000 Color Clicks on 65lb Cover Stock
26,000 6x9 Envelopes single-sided Monochrome only

We plan to pair the CX3641 with a Straight Shooter conveyor. Do you think this setup can handle our production?

Thanks in advance

 

Hey, this is Roman, we had a conversation earlier today. If I may, I'd like to say that running 377k of b/w stuff on any color printer is a big time overkill. Keep in mind that b/w stuff is usually less quality demanding and while you're running a b/w on this oki or any other color printer you're wearing the fuser and all imaging units because they turning, plus image belt, etc. So you lessen the "good quality" part of all the supplies while printing b/w. I will give you an example - once we had decided to put a Xerox WC7335 under service contract, machine was almost new - 12,000 pages only so we call xerox... They offered 11c per color click and 2 c per b/w, we took it but normal service contract click charge for b/w machine is 0.8 c to 1 c. If you have some room and few $ to spare, get a HP laserJet 9040 / 9050 DTN, that machine can go on for millions, pm is user doable, cartridge - aftermarket is under $200 and gives about 40,000 prints at 5%, I know that in real life there is no 5% but still will cost you less than running b/w on color printer. These printers are inexpensive used for such a robust machine - about $1200 for a nice one, we used to sell them a lot and had lots of repeat purchases as customers were growing/expending. My point is that running b/w jobs on color machine is not as harmless is it may seem to be, there are situations where it would make sense like if you have 100,000 of color and 5,000-10,000 b/w that yes, no bother to get another machine...

 

Hey Roman. Thanks for weighing in. We're currently running a Canon ImageRunner 105 which we bought for all of our B/W digital jobs (we also have an offset press for big jobs). The IR105 works well for us but we have a maintenance contract which we deem necessary considering the minor things that have needed replacing over the years but the ongoing cost is significant. I'm searching for a way to bring color and mailing in house and also move all of our IR105 production load to the new printer.

Important considerations:

1. Financially a CX3641 would work well for us considering our amount and type of production. Increasing or decreasing B/W clicks on the machine has a small effect on operating cost compared to the cost of operating an additional B/W machine.

2. Obviously money is only a portion of the important factors here, the next being quality. Does anybody have experience putting a lot of load on one of these and that effect on quality? Roman, I understand what you're saying but if we are always diligent about maintenance, wouldn't that ward off quality issues?

3. The manufacturer says the duty cycle is up to 150,000/month. How true is that? The type of jobs we do means the printer will often sit for a few days untouched then we'll run one job and put 6,400 clicks on it all at once. Can this machine handle that?

Thanks again for your two cents. Any other input is appreciated.

 

Monthly duty volume is the biggest BS ever - This is simply speed of the machine x number of hours a day x number of working days per month. It reflects basically nothing except giving a chance for salesman to misguide the customers. OKIs are good machines, not just because I sell them , we had a few well over 1.5 million and working - it is pretty good for reasonably small and inexpensive box.

 

Okay. So now it just gets down to whether we can get away with running all of our color, envelopes and B/W jobs on the CX3641 without sacrificing quality and up-time.