BW Production Printing Headaches

[reckless]

Lee,
Thats very cheap! Much cheaper than a maintenance contract. Do you recommend keeping it off contract and calling a technician when needed?

What do you think is the life of one of these units?

[blackcat4866]

Just to give you some slight idea what's involved, I have scheduled an 8M PM on a similar build (bizhub PRESS 1052) There will be 50 individual parts and over a day labor. I won't be taking the time to tally all that up, but it will be considerable.

I have seen individual cases when my customers have done 500K without some sort of mishap, but all it takes is a jam in the booklet maker to blow that. Jams in the accessories can be very difficult to remove, assuming that you get all of the scraps.

It is a strong machine, but I would NEVER put the maintenance of production level machine in the hands of an amateur. It takes years of experience to learn the nuances of this profession, and you'll never get that experience working on one machine.

I agree with KenB. You have enough to worry about running a print shop. Do you really need a second occupation? You'll be a very stressed, unhappy man.

Should you decide to pay as you go, be prepared to spend $2000 every time you pick up the phone for service.

Just my two cents ... =^..^=

[wjurls]

Lee,
Thats very cheap! Much cheaper than a maintenance contract. Do you recommend keeping it off contract and calling a technician when needed?

What do you think is the life of one of these units?

It is cheap, but that also doesnt count toner. If you do really high volume the cost of expensive parts is easily obsorbed over time. If not, and you end up needing a $3,000 LPH assembly, or image control board it can sting a bit. In the long run it's almost always cheaper to do time and materials. Just don't cheap out. 1051's and 1200's don't like generic supplies or parts. Properly maintained they are extremely reliable. Do to this customers volume I visit the site weekly to perform regular maintenance. Timee onsite per visit is anywhere from 2 to 4 hours a week. They also have 2 C1060's and a C8000.
I can see the machines under my care easily cresting 30 million clicks without breaking a sweat.

[wjurls]

Add to the above, like the other guys have said. You want a tech that knows these machines. They aren't for any geek off the street.

Lee
The Copy Guys
Riverside, Ca

[wjurls]

I just looked at my original post and spotted a major typo. Sorry guys. The actual CPC was $.004 not $.0014 Damn fat fingers!!

[Hap]

it has been my experiance that customers can save money without a contract but customers with a contract tend to be happier couple points
1: responce time no contract billable customers take a back seat to customers with a contract
2: no contract means u will get hit with a big bill every time u place a service call while contract customes pay same ampount every month more or less
3: with a billable customer its always a judgement whether to replace parts as the cust always wants to cut cost where with a contract u just replace whats needed and what if a billable cust has an issue u need to try several parts to find problem

[REGSIS]

The unit has 9M copies on it but is guaranteed to go under a service contract with a full money back guarantee. It was on a contract directly from Minolta as of last week. I was debating about putting it under a new contract but looking at Yoda/Allen is making me consider it.

When these machines are new for 1st million usually you will experience no problems just toner exchange. After that I've been on customer site so many times for various problems. Keep it on contract if you can. 4000$ for 1Million print is very reasonable price.

[freginold]

3: with a billable customer its always a judgement whether to replace parts as the cust always wants to cut cost where with a contract u just replace whats needed and what if a billable cust has an issue u need to try several parts to find problem

That's a good point. A lot of times, especially with weird electrical problems, you may have to try a couple (or more) different boards before you figure out what the problem is. If you don't have a service contract, you may end up paying for all of those boards, even if they weren't necessary, depending on the servicer.