I am considering buying a used Versant 2100

[CBravo]

I have a small manufacture and several production lines. Clothes, children's toys, cosmetics, labels, various technical stuff & user manuals in full colour...

I need a lot of different prints every month, and lately I really need a banner.

Local printing houses have more and more problems with employees, print quality is declining, deadlines are being extended to seven or more days. Or I print in offset 1000 sheets because that is the minimum in my country, in order to put 400 unused ones in the old paper for recycling.

For this reason, I am seriously considering buying a used Versant 2100. I have several offers ranging from 1.5 to 3 million prints. New 4100 is not an option for me because of the price.

I would like to hear some experiences and opinions from Versant 2100 users. Are 3 milion print too much for this machine?

What should I pay attention to when buying a second-hand 2100 machine, what are the machine's weaknesses, what else should I look for besides the quality of prints and counters?

Thanks in advance to everyone for their shared opinion.

[jhalfhide]

I was working on a couple today, at around 5.5-6 million each. Working fine, just the usual parts that go the same as any other 2100.

Weaknesses are the 2ndBTR (roller surface wears with coated stock), and the fuser gear input assy. I'd be checking HFSI, and manually checking the 2ndBTR and the entire fuser. If you are taking it on a service contract, then it really doesn't matter as it's the company's issue to ensure it's prepped and sorted. If running it yourself, it'd well be worth investing in a couple of hours of a tech's time. One with experience of the model. If you ask Xerox, they'll throw the book at it though so expect them to quote for a full FTR (basically replace everything at your cost so there's no come back on them).

[CBravo]

Thanks for the insights. Greatly appreciated!

No contract in my country for used and old stuff like this. Technician will also try to screw me, to sell me as many parts as he can, so would like to know myself what to check initially and to know personally what for exchange.

I'm waiting for photos and videos of machine when printing. If that satisfied me, then I will buy from that Adrian guy service manual and learn a bit before I check all that finally before paying?.

Thanks once again. Will check for that, what are you telling me.

[rockdude]

This is not really a "Do it yourself" machine. If you cannot get a service contract, and you think the technicians will screw you, then you had better stay with the printing houses.
Otherwise you are going to find yourself with a very expensive paperweight when it breaks and you have no one to help.

[CBravo]

Thank you very much for your insight.

As I know, Versant 2100 has easily replaceable toners, drums, fuser, transfer belt.

Could you please elaborate a bit, what could go such a terrible wrong except those consumables, to make a paper weight from machine?

I still don't see exact machine seller offers me, so everything is in the thin air. But I would like to be ready when I have all the data.

Thanks.?

[Caffeine]

Oh there are so many things... These are very complex machines, and there are a lot of parts that can and do wear out, or just plain break unexpectedly.

I mean, there are a million things hardware-wise that could go wrong that normally a tech would come out to fix.

There are also a bunch of software-related things that can become messed up that I tech might reload the software for.

If the machines never really needed much of anything other than toners and drums and fusers and transfer belts, technicians wouldn't exist. But they do, because parts break. Small gears strip. Bearings wear out. Things happen.

Have you ever opened up a 2100 to see the complexity of the insides? You'd need to be confident enough that you can open it up, remove a whole bunch of parts just to get to the part that you need to replace, and then reassemble the whole thing. It's a big deal. (Some parts are easy to access, some aren't.)

And that's not even talking about figuring out WHICH part went bad when something happens. An end user would have no idea where to start, and there are no readily available service manuals for this machine, they are in a special Xerox format that you can only use on a computer, that has special software installed on it. (And this software is only available to licensed techs, you will never get it from Xerox as an end-user.)

To be honest, based on your description of what you need, and my guess at your service experience, I think it might be a very bad idea for you to try and take this on as a DIY service machine. It is not designed to be that, and you will almost certainly end up with a very costly learning experience.

A better option might be a smaller machine, with cheaper easier to buy (and fewer) service parts. You might not be able to achieve replacing your outside vendors for EVERYTHING, but you could likely take on a large portion of what you currently send out. You would only need to send out certain items, like banners.

That's my 2 cents. Good luck with whatever you decide!

[CBravo]