Ricoh 651 / 751 experience

we also have an alert wrench displayed. this is on quit a bit. tech cones in and fixes is it but it comes back!!
may be we should transport our tech to New York.

 

it jams

 

Sounds like your having a lot of problems. I don't have any of these isssues with my machine. Unfortunately your in a difficult position if your local Ricoh
dealer is clueless.

 

who orphan do you run 14pt?
how many sheets per day?

 

Current Equipment Status:
DOWN - HARD
Over the last three months we have had no longer than 3 days of up time in a row. Don't get me wrong when this thing is operating correctly, I couldn't be happier with the quality. My solids are clean and smooth, most of the time. And I love being able to duplex 14pt. I was a Happy Camper until.... It all started with the black developer unit for months ago. It started leaking on EVERYTHING! It was a mess. Developer dust under belts, inside sensors, you name it, it had developer on it. It took 3 days to diagnose all the issues associated with the developer leak. Then another 3 days to get the replacement parts from Japan and another day to install them. All in vain, they lasted but one day. Fast forward 3 more days for parts to get from Japan for the second time. This time we lasted for a whole week! We were down for a total of 15 days. Down two week up for one! Now that's progress.
Next up was the laser unit, or the image transfer belt or some sensor... regardless it happened in the middle of a 20hr run. Every third page had yellow fallout. It was a mess and the job almost bounced. More cleaning inside the Ricoh and more random part replacement.
I feel really bad for our technician. He practically lives here. It's just one thing after another with this printer. We developed a 2mm front to back skew where the long edge of the sheet on the bottom matches up but the top corners are off in opposite directions. This was after the laser motor was replaced. And Most recently we have been having 5 minute to start printing regardless of the file size. If the printer jams, 5 minutes. If the printer runs out of paper, 5 minutes. Setting up front to back registration, minimum 30 min. Fiery was reformatted, printer was reformatted, image processing board replaced, ram replaced, hard drives replaced. We essentially have a new printer yet EVERY single problem we have had over the last 3 months seems to have come back!

What should you take away from this...

If you are thinking about getting a 751. Ask yourself if; constant stress, endless frustration, overall decrease in will to live, and a strong possibility of passing along a full head of grey hair to your first born out weigh spending a bit more on a second or third generation printer with tested technology from another company.
OR!
Buy two 751s and have the equivalent of one production machine.
OR!
Get out of printing altogether. You know the industry is shrinking and the offset plants are running at cost to keep the lights on.

 

is anyone else having problems (paper jams) printing on Strathmore 88lb cover stock??

 

651 751 Halo print fix on Screens

We have a 751 that was experiencing on 30% tints a haloing around the type. It was weird issue because on other jobs we didn't see it. But on certain jobs that had 20% or 30% tints we would see it. What fixed it was we dropped the default setting from 200 dot in the fiery to 175 dot not 175 line. The other thing we noticed was our 50% grays was a whole lot better and the banding issue we seen in the past was gone. So we decided to do some tests created several tints on a page and tested every combination and found that the 175 dot worked best. We noticed in most cases with the testing jobs and live jobs that at 200 dot fine or any combination of this produced a more grainy look versus the 175 dot setting. Also found that if you set your Fiery color profile input as ISO you get better results and if you get a grainy look, experiment with the GCR settings on the Fiery, this also effected banding issues in the black channel. Try this I think you will be surprised at your resaults.

 

We have been using the Ricoh 901s now for a year and a half and this machine is Amazing Workhorse!

 

We have had our Ricoh 651 for 8 months. No issues with this machine. Handles everything with ease.

 

going to buy

question to some of you guys that have had banding and other issues... how is it going? Has it end up with a fix, or do You still have the problems.
We are deciding between a km7000, km8000 and a ricoh 651/751.
KM's seem to bee good machines with good uptime and consistant colours. Ricoh is an outsider with a large format and a able to print on a wide range of synthetic medias and textured paper.
I'll apreciate positve and negative feedback on the Ricoh 651/751

 

We still have issues with our 651. On top of everything else we were running NCR 11x17 it ran okay but when we switched to 8.5 x 11 it kept miss feeding. Placed a service call and Ricoh came back with we don't support Running NCR on our machine. In the brochure it says that the 651 can run unlimited stocks through their machine. We still have the same issues as before and Ricoh as I said before they just turned their back on us. Before you sign a contract with Ricoh pay an attorney to go over it. We did it to late in the fine print they have all sort of out from what our Attorney says. We have had our machine for over a year and have had problems with on solution from Ricoh. Feel free to call and I can give you a history of what problems we have encountered.

 

Thanks M & M. I'm going to test in a couple of days, and i think i know what to look for. Halo is on my list.
How about banding and small stripes across the feed direction in the mid tones and specially in a light green colour? do You have problems there?
How about massives in eg. 100 continues prints? does that make a problem?
How about colour consistency over 1000 prints. do You know the delta E
How about density eveness from left to right and top to bottom of a sheet. Does it shift from day to day or?
Hope You can answer those questions as well
thanks from Denmark

 

C651

We have been running a C651 for 5 months - 300,000 prints. We saw the banding issue one time in March and they fixed it within 24 hours and we have not seen the issue again (they installed updated developer units). Jamming was an issue to begin with until our operators got the drawer settings figured out. Our previous machine (KM 6501) required the guides in the drawer to be very tight to help maintain register. The Ricoh does not require tight settings on the drawers yet holds MUCH better registration. We are very happy with the machine - the output looks good and the productivity of the machine is great!

 

Thanks chucknovo nice to here some good about the machine.
Have You been running synhtetics, PP etc. on it? I have let them do a test on Polyester with we are printing on MGI, and it looks great on the 751 as well. Xerox can not handle that.

 

651

Have not run anything other than paper/card stock. We have run 14 point C2S Carolina with no issues. We tested running envelopes and it did run them, however we haven't had an order for short run envelopes Also ran 13" X 24.5" banners as a test, and again it ran them fine but we have yet to have a live job that size.
The big advantage we have seen is productivity - the machine runs rated speed on pretty much any job we put on.

 

thanks again. Looks forward to test in a couple of days.

 

The 6561 will run polyester but not NCR, which their brochure says the stocks are unlimited. It also does not like dark colors like a Desert Storm. We tried to run a menu with screens with type over the screen, we still have the halo we showed our client they bounced the proof so we put it on our
Xerox and it was fine, Ricoh still says they are working on. It's been a year and they still can't fix it. I can send samples if needed.

 

Chuck what City are you in? Can you email me your contact info, I want to ask you more about your 13"x24.5" banner test...
Kevin 713-480-3378 or kchodrow@gmail.com

 

Apart from a couple of jams and some minor issues, our experience with the 651 has been positive. However, the machine is only six months old so maybe we have all this to look forward to!

 

I can send you a file that you can try on your machine and see if you get the same effect we do. Ricoh took files and ran on other machines, and from what my tech said if failed to produce a acceptable print. If you look at the print if you want a sample file you will see a white outline around the type that is inside of a screen area, like a newsletter. Let me know if you would like to try it.