Ricoh Pro 7110 Problems / Known Issues / Price

After I finally got rid of our Ricoh Pro C7110sx I want so share my experience with that new machine.

We used around 300 hours talking, mailng with Ricoh. And i dont know how many emails. But above 800.

Ricoh finally took the machine back (and kept a lot of the money we payed for the machine) Even though Ricoh nordic top boss said they would cancel the deal.
The main reason they took it back, was that it makes white dots on all uncoated papers. A expert came from holland for two days. And the conclussion was that the machine worked perfect. And did not have any problems - if I printed on coated papers. And all my uncoated paper was not approved for the machine. Not even the Ricoh paper I used !!!
He didnt have any explanation for why the problem got worse and worse over time, and over a printjob. Hers is a picture of print 1 and print 500 in the same job. The job is on 120g MAESTRO EXTRA.



First the good things.
1 - Registration is very good and constent.
2 - The test prints loked very nice, some of the best I have seen. (that lasted two weeks)

Then the downside.
1 - The machine make white dots on ALL uncoated papers. This was not a issue on our machine. Ricoh had same problems on their demo machine on another location. (The problem got worse and worse over time, to begin it was very hard to see. you need to print more than 500 prints to see it.)

2 - VERY poor quality (white dots) on textured paper (was ok the first month) Ricoh says its air pressure, humidity and so on.

3 - 350 paperjams in 520.000 prints. Thats around one jam / 1400 prints.
Here is a video of how to remove it. Its almost impossible to remove A3 paper without tearing the paper. And the purge tray catch 5% of jammed paper.

4 - High sound level if you have vacuum feeders.

5 - Clear and white toner just dosn´t look good in most cases. Ofcourse you can make a nice design with it. But you really need to think about it. Eg. Its almost impossible to see clear toner on white uncoated paper.

6 - The Fiery Rip have tons of issues. Here is the ones that vere not fixex 01/08-2015. I have put a % of how often the error came up.

- If you make a rushprint, the job you interrupt. Will have one side of one page missing if you print duplex. (50% of the time)

- Impose makes all kind of wierd errors if you use it in a workflow like hotfolder or the new jobflow. (25%)

- If you use clear toner, the first page of a duplex job will be turned 180 degree. Not the entire sheet, just one side og the first print. (90%)

- If you use "face up" in finishing, the first page of a duplex job will be turned 180 degree. Not the entire sheet, just one side og the first print. (75%)

- If you combine duplex and clear toner, the print will have VERY different colors under the clear toner. It looks like a 256 golor RGB. (50%)

- "Visual enhance Editor" only works if you use some of the RGB profiles in the papersettings. With the others, the colors look like they are inverted, if open the file in "Visual Enhance Editor" (100%)

- The printer slow down to around ½ speed, and keep printing at that speed until you restart everything. (This is a bug Fiery send to Japan, and they know the problem but dosnt see it that often. They apparantly have no idea whay cause this. More memory didnt fix the problem) (10%)

- If you impose files through jobflow, sometimes the bleed vill be removed on one side of a duplex job.

- Pages are sometimes deleted and replaced with other paged if oyu use jobflow. Eg. a 2 side buisness card will come out with page 2 on bode sides.

Finally here is my setup for Ricoh 7110, prices are calculated from DKR:

Decurl Unit
TCRU/ORU Type S3 (SetA)
TCRU/ORU Type S3 (Set B)
TCRU/ORU Type S3 (Set C)
Fiery E-43A
Delivery - 2 day training.
Finisher (bookletfinisher) SR5060
Impose, compose + pitstop
5th Station Replacement Kit Type S3
Scanner
4 vaccum trayBridge
Punch Unit
Multi Bypass Tray
Multi Bypass Banner sheet Tray
Es-2000 Calibration
Buffer unit.

 

Do you keep the room the machine is in at a fixed humidity and is your paper stored in that same room? If yes, what percentage? What digital machine were you running before the Ricoh? What machine are you going to replace that one with?

 

No, i dont have fixed humidity. But paper is in same room. Ricoh measured the humidity and temp, and it was Well within specs. I had a Xerox 700 before, and replaced with versant 2100, They dont have problems.
Also, i have 8 x Ricoh mp 7500 and 4 x konica minolta C650 in the same room, they never had air pressure/temperature/humidity problems.

 

I was asking because I'm currently running the Xerox 800 and was thinking about adding the Ricoh Pro7100 to our lineup.
I maintain a humidity of 35% - 40% in my digital area. It does make a difference. I had posted in another thread looking for feedback on the Ricoh and didn't get a response so I found your post interesting.

 

I had a humidity around 35% when Ricoh measured.
But you will regret the 7100 every day. Just the process of removing jams, would have been enough for me not to choose it. Even if everything else worked.
I have the xerox 2100 instead, it make better prints, and are almost same price and spec.
The test prints look nice on Ricoh. But if you run 10 different jobs, the Versant is way better. So many things just doesn't come out right on the Ricoh 7110

If you are a in-house printer, and you have some jobs that are not important with colors and so on. The Ricoh might be a good choice. But I wouldn't recommend it.

 

Thanks for your honest feedback.

 

I decided to post the prices again, since Ricoh started telling stories that are not true i n DK. So no reason to be nice to them.

Price including RIP 2 large feeders, impose - compose, finisher: 627.571 DKR = 94.516 USD
Click price: 23 øre / print (same for A3 and banner print) = 0,03 USD / print