BIZHUB 8000

[mgutski]

went to the class early November, training in Chicago. nice machine. dont have any in my area yet. as far as the press 6000 and 7000, if you are c6500 trained once you pass the c8000 class you can become certified on them through online training..

[Stirton.M]

I heard it was over engineered. I mean why have two fuser units thats twice the work and twice the cost.

Actually, after day 3 of the course, I now know why and how the 2nd fuser works with the main,

The main body fuser is greatly improved over the older one. The mechanics of it are far easier to work with and involve fewer parts on the drive side. Some improvements include a polishing roller that purportedly polishes the upper fusing roller to eliminate the marks seen from wear marks left behind on thick paper stock...for example, letter size paper leaves wear marks on the surface, printing at larger paper sizes, those wear marks are seen as dull areas in solids on the larger stock. The polish process is supposed to eliminate this.

The second fuser's purpose is to give gloss to the finished document on certain heavy paper stocks. Lighter stock will bypass the unit. It is contained in an external option to the very left of the main body, and though it is an "option", it is a mandatory option. The fuser also moves back and forth inside the unit, reducing the wear marks. This unit has two belts of identical nature, instead of a belt and roller, similar to the C6500 series. The main fuser has a large fuser roller with two belts on either side. The upper belt is there to help maintain heat while in idle, the lower belt provides the nip, which is also extended from roughly 1/4 inch (10mm) to 30mm, or just slightly over 1 inch. Maintenance on both fusers is extremely easy, especially the main fuser. Maintenance time roughly 45 minutes at current estimate...both belts are complete units, so simply replace the unit, minus the lamps, along with the main fuser roller and yer done.

The second fuser, because it is not always used, service intervals are greatly extended.

Both units are ORU (operator replaceable units)...simply stated, the operator will replace the unit as needed...we rebuild the used unit and leave it as a spare for the user. Several other items, like the transfer belt unit, developer units, and drum units and charge wires, are also ORU...all use resettable RFI tags to reset the counters on those items.

There are many many other wows in this machine...

texchar555

The decurler is in the RU-508 unit, the other mandatory option that attaches to the left of the EF-101 (second fuser). That unit also contains the humidifier option. Additional finish options like perfect bind, saddle stitch and fold and so on attach there.

Some other cool features....2 paper feed units (PF-704) can be ganged together to allow 6 drawers of large format, high capacity paper to feed up to 350 GSM paper stocks, all air fed to the main body. There is an optional document feeder/scanner PF unit (PF-705) that can be used in place of one PF-704. These units do not have to have a second unit attached.

8 laser beams per print head unit, allowing 1200 DPI per colour. An additional colour registration sensor and an additional density sensor are also included to improve reproduction. Drum units are slightly larger as well.

Thus far I am completely impressed with the mechanics of the machine and some of the small improvements. The the RU-508, decurler/humidifier section is the cats meow....this unit includes colour density sensors to ensure colour accuracy feedback to the machine AFTER the job has been through the fusers. The machine will periodically send a patch page through for the sensors to measure on the fly, maintaining colour balance without user intervention.

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

That sounds pretty cool Stirton. Is the glossy effect from the second fuser just from the passing of the paper itself or does the second fuser actually apply some sort of coating or chemical to the paper?

[Stirton.M]

It is the passing of the paper through it...this is the description in the training wbt....

Duplex fusing is performed for a second time (2nd Fusing) on paper
which has already been fused at the 1st Fusing in the Main Body, this
will help to achieve a Natural Gloss that is close to that of Offset Printing
and improve Gloss Evenness.


I didn't describe this 2nd fuser very well...

If you are familiar with the C6500 fuser, the upper fuser consisted of a fusing belt wrapped around a large roller (heat lamps inside) and a smaller sponge roller. The smaller roller is pressed against the lower fusing roller to create the fusing nip at the time of paper passage, other times, the lower roller and belt are separated.

On the C8000, there is no lower roller, just an inverted duplicate of the upper belt arrangement. Basically two spongy rollers are pressed against each other (two belts pressed against each other actually, the rollers are inside the belts)....

Not much else to them, aside from drive motors, an assortment of temperature sensors and 6 lamps.

I have yet to see the benefit of this in action, but hopefully by the end of this week, I will have been able to test print beyond internal prints.

Some other cool features....

paper skew registration correction....two rollers directly driven by two separate motors steer the paper according to two pairs of optical sensors, the first sensors send a signal to the motors to straighten out the paper as much as they can, the second will sense if there is any prevailing skew present and if so, will forward the motors a little more at the same time causing a loop to the registration roller. Basically the paper will be square to the transfer process.

The second transfer roller on the ADU, used to be a rubber-ish roller. Now it is a transparent belt wrapped around two metal rollers.

Another cool feature is that the transfer belts themselves have drift correction...a set of sensors sense the side position of the belts and if the belt drifts to the front or rear of the unit, a tension roller is either tightened or loosened within the belt via a motor/gear/lever assembly that causes the belt to shift in the opposite direction as it rolls. Older generations, C500, 8050 and C6500 series belt units were all susceptible to drifting....various causes to this, not common, but it could happen.

[HORSE]

That sounds pretty cool Stirton. Is the glossy effect from the second fuser just from the passing of the paper itself or does the second fuser actually apply some sort of coating or chemical to the paper?

No the paper just goes through a second fusing process which gives it the shine, Stirton what do you think of the 2nd Transfer belt unit? I hope your trainer apologized in advance.

[Stirton.M]

It has its benefits and of course, drawbacks too I suppose...the drawback being that it is not easy to replace that belt....it is REALLY easy to take the unit off the ADU, but not so easy to remove and replace the belt item itself, even after it is out of the machine. And of course, having to take great care not to touch the surface of it....I think it could become a problem in the field, pending the type of users who may own the machine....

I suppose that since it is an ORU unit, that is some consolation.

As for the instructor, he's "learning" about some of these things along with us. We're the pilot course in Canada on this machine.

[HORSE]

It has its benefits and of course, drawbacks too I suppose...the drawback being that it is not easy to replace that belt....it is REALLY easy to take the unit off the ADU, but not so easy to remove and replace the belt item itself, even after it is out of the machine. And of course, having to take great care not to touch the surface of it....I think it could become a problem in the field, pending the type of users who may own the machine....

I suppose that since it is an ORU unit, that is some consolation.



As for the instructor, he's "learning" about some of these things along with us. We're the pilot course in Canada on this machine.

Its easy to take the unit out but the belt is a c**t, I did a 1/2 PM a few weeks ago on our showroom machine and have a few installs over the next few weeks.

I did my training in August, have you got your bizhub PRESS polo shirt yet? or do you have to wait to Friday for that?

I must post pictures of it sometime.

[Stirton.M]

Come to think of it, there was no mention of the shirt thus far...I'll be sure to make a stink about it tomorrow....

There is some talk at my shop that the sales reps don't want to push this machine...too expensive according to them...I think I heard 3 are sold in Toronto already, with more on the way.

I've been taking lots of pics of the assorted areas we looked at, lots of images of things opened up and so forth...mostly for the benefit of those sales reps, so they can see just how superior this machine is relative to the 6500s....I am reserving judgment on the 7000, as I understand it is a beefed up 6500....lasers the prime difference if I understood what I heard, same DPI as the 8000.

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

Its easy to take the unit out but the belt is a c**t, I did a 1/2 PM a few weeks ago on our showroom machine and have a few installs over the next few weeks.

I did my training in August, have you got your bizhub PRESS polo shirt yet? or do you have to wait to Friday for that?

I must post pictures of it sometime.

awe man, i'd like a bizhub polo shirt. we never get any good stuff from NEC. we can get nec branded items but we have to pay for them.

[texchar555]

yes they are the sames 8 bit