Sheet to Sheet Colour

After spending most of last Sunday hand sorting 4,000 postcards where the colour went from purple to navy blue I'm wondering if it is even possible for a digital press to produce consistent colour throughout a run?

We have a Xerox Color 550 properly calibrated, paper profiled, and in a good environment and this thing cannot produce 200 sheets that are even close to being the same.

Techs have tried everything and have been in contact with the engineers and nobody has a solution.

Meeting tomorrow with rep and I just want to return the machine.

Am I being unreasonable or what?

Thanks
Jeff

 

I guess I'll have to reply to myself. They are proposing to replace the 550 with a 700i. Will the 700i produce consistent colour over the full run? Anything specific to look for or ask when we demo? Demo will be at a printer's shop not in the Xerox demo room.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

I used to run a DocuColor 8000 and it was pretty hard to keep any kind of color consistency. Sheet to Sheet or even inboard to outboard. The whole DocuColor line seemed pretty shaky on consistency from the 2060 to 7000 to 8000.

Two machines I've seen that have decent color consistency are the little DocuColor 3535s and the iGens.

A non-Xerox demo is good, but talk to your techs too. Usually they'll tell you the horror stories, if any, that the sales team would never mention.