RISO ez590u wrong choice?

Hello.


I am completely new to printing and have been reading and digesting as much information as I can in order to assist my employer.

Our company has purchased the Riso EZ590u digitial duplicator. I am having a difficult time understanding the concept of "masters", and I fear it is that misunderstanding that leads me to believe we made the wrong choice in buying the RISO EZ590.

From what I have read, each new print job will create a master, which can then be used to print all of the copies of that particular job. This works great for things like letterhead or marketing flyers where you may print hundreds or thousands of copies of the same print job.

But they want to use this for personalized greeting cards only. And these are going to be sold in packages of 15. Doesn't this mean that each order equals a new master each time? We could receive 1000 orders for Christmas, but all of these orders are single orders with differing personalization, which would require a new master because the print info has changed, no? Does this seem practical? I tried to question it and was blown off, and they mentioned feeding card stock into regular colour high capacity colour printers just results in jams or is not even possible.

But I imagine changing the master every 15 prints as being far worse.

Or perhaps, I just don't get it.

Anyone have any insights?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

Your understanding seems correct -- for each new design or change it will create a new master through which the ink will flow to create those prints. So for economy mostly they're used where you'll print 100 to 2000 of the same design, like newsletters or church bulletins, etc.

How thick or heavy are the cards? Do they have features like unique textures or embossing that would make them less practical to print on a laser printer?

Current copiers commonly print up to 12 pt or 300 gsm now. The Illumina can print heaver stiffer stock than that but is expensive if the coverage is high and the color quality isn't that good for photographs compared to xerox or canon or km. But it's designed for heavy stock and could be a good solution for low coverage printing on heavier stock (quality is higher than any duplicator I've seen if any screen is involved.)

 

The other solution would be Xerox DC12 (it prints easily on 300 gsm), so I think even on heavier paper print would be fine...

 

Yeah, a good heavy duty printer seems like only reasonable tool for this kind of orders.