[Misc] C360 or C451 which one to keep

[Guest]

I volunteer for a small children's theater group and someone recently gave us two copiers, a C360 and a C451 neither are currently functioning but should operate with minimal work. I'm trying to figure out which one is better suited for our needs and then I will put effort into that one.
The C360 was manufactured in November 2009, has a copy count of 540342, FS-527 with stapler.
The C451 was manufactured July 2008, copy count of 761393, FS-519 with stapler and hole punch.

I don't know much about the machines but they appear to have many of the same functions that we don't need. Our main use would be to copy scripts that range from 30 to 70 pages twice a year and 100 at a time. The rest of its use would be single copies and one page flyers to hand out at rehearsals. I do like the C360 because of its ability to print from a USB drive and I like the C451 because of the hole punch. The speed is not an issue nor are all the network features of both copiers. It might be nice to store the current shows script on the machine in the event of having to print out an additional copy. Our needs are simple and our budget is small. Which one do I keep or are these machines generally to costly for our needs? There doesn't appear to be much of a market for used machines so selling theses machines and buying something different doesn't seem to plausible.

Thanks

[copier tech]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

The C360 is a way better machine, more reliable & cheaper to run.

[Albonline]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

c360, hands down. 451 is parts and power hungry. most c360s we have in the field just run.

[copyman]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

agree, the c360 a better machine and less $$ to run. FYI kon/min has deemed c451 "end of life" no longer supported. If you have room keep them both. Switch between the machines just to keep them moving once in awhile. When the C451 has an issue or needs an expensive consumable supply junk it. The C360 should give you many more years even with that high meter. Make sure the consumables settings on both machines are set to suspend or disabled, which means machines won't lock out because a consumable has reached its life. Also can turn off messages while you are in the service mode.

[blackcat4866]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

I agree with everybody else. The thing that I hated the most about the C451 was the damn creaky fusers. Not fatal, but annoying. =^..^=

[copyman]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

I hear you BC. That damn squeaking fuser! Even with the mods it stilled made noise. Few other common problems I remember were the paper jams from the 2 front loading LCC's. A ton of bulletins on this, especially with tray 3 having to go through that horrible horizontal transport area above tray 4. Apparently Kon/Min thought this was a good design and used it for many years and series, di 5510 up to Biz 751. Horrible design! The front loading LCC's didn't work as top trays 1 & 2 on the Di series and still didn't work as the bottom trays 3&4 on the bizhub series. Like I have said on this forum only way to get those machines feeding good consistently was to put a side LCC on it.
Also the black developer dumping on the B&W Di series and all the way up to the color C451, etc.

Glad they are gone for the most part. I still have one C451 left that I service. Only using side LCC, customer loves machine. Bought a C454 and kept this as a "backup" Turns out they use the C451 more than C454.

[myster]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

"the c360 a better machine and less $$ to run"

[Dclark]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

There is no debate on this subject! Thanks for all the input, I changed the

consumables settings on the C360 and now it is a functioning machine. Now I have to spend some time learning how to use it. Some place in the manual I saw a reference to running printer quality tests, can you give me a hint as to where to look and how to evaluate the test pages?

Thanks

[JR2ALTA]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

Utility, user settings, printer settings, print reports, demo page

[Bernard]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

The C360 !!

[raplma]

Re: C360 or C451 which one to keep

The voices are unanimous and I would agree, but I have a soft spot for the c451, we flogged ours to death literally.

Reading these posts has brought back memories... our first of six c451/c550's back in 2010, was doing 90k per month - and this one was on an A3 click (factory set) - and the consumables we got through was immense.
Oh, and indeed who can forget the black IU dumping all over the lazer and having to hoover it all out, there were times when you'd go through two blacks in a week.
They crunched through the nylon gears, wore out the metal screw gears on motors, we got rather good at stripping them down and rebuilding them.
And I forgot how many times we replaced the bypass tray, not just pickup rollers but the whole unit.
Those drawers were a nightmare No.3 never worked, No.4 on a good day, No.1 lasted a year, No.2 lasted the life, so we put everything through the bypass/LCC.

After all that, our first one did just shy of 4Million clicks, we still have one c451 for black overprints and a c550 for envelopes, we tend to use these than use our production machines as we have found them better at handling small sized, very light and very heavy media, yes we were one of those who dared to put thicker than 300gsm board through. The current c550 is just about to be scrapped and it's done 3.6M clicks our last c451 is just a baby at 400k, but it's time is ending as we find it ever harder to source parts and consumables (UK). We found that if you were willing to take time to correct the image and colour registration you could get a good print out of them. Add one of the all-in-one finishers and they are very versatile machines.

As suggested if you have the space keep them both, you will find one is better at some things than the other.

Enjoy