Ricoh A3 Color Envelope Printer by...

There's been a lot of threads on the Print4Pay Hotel forums about the Xante Impressia which is powered by the Ricoh SP831DN print engine. I posted a few blogs in reference to the Ricoh SP831DN printer and my first blog about a "Print Shop in a Box" in 2007 . Which can be found here and here.

I learned many years ago that you don't have to buy the expensive offerings from companies like Xante, in fact you can build your own envelope press by purchasing an envelope feeder and an output conveyor.  In one of my accounts we installed an Ricoh Color  printer A4 version and added four paper trays and for under $4,500 we had an impressive A4 color envelope printer.

I ran across this video the other day in reference to the Impressia and thought our readers could take a look at the latest and greatest in color technology.  If you're interested in the Ricoh version then send me an email to art@p4photel.com

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh Color SPC831DN "Top Ten Features"

In last weeks blog on the Ricoh SP831DN we focused on hardware specs, this week we'll tell you more about some of the awesome print features that come with the Ricoh SP831DN Color Printer.

Printer driver features is not something you can learn from reading the brochure, nor when you are looking the printer up on line to review pricing. Most end users and sales people ignore the awesome printer driver features and options that are included with laser printers. Thus a customer could purchase a laser printer and never be aware of the advanced printer driver features/functionality that are available, and some of these features are capable of improving business process and cutting costs.

Top Ricoh SP831DN Printer Driver Features:

1. Black Over Print: Black over print is available to enhance the quality of  text and black images  printed on colored backgrounds. Think of it this way, the color image is printed first and then the black text and graphics is printed last, thus this will prevent blurred text or haloing with the final rendering.
2. CMYK Simulation Profile: When using the Ricoh Postscript 3 driver, you can turn on US Offset Print CMYK Simulation Profile which enables a color profile that closely reproduces colors that are used with ink based commercial offset printing in the US. Even though this feature will simulate SWOP (Simulated Web Offset Printing) it is genuine SWOP an is not supported.  When I've used this feature with other print devices I've found that it gives you an additional way to reproduce or come close to the colors of your choice.

Ricoh SPC831DN Print Shop in a Box "The Reveal"

A few years ago when Ricoh introduced the Ricoh SPC811DN, I dubbed that printer as a "print shop in a box".

Funny that Xante is now using the same line with the their new color laser envelope press named IMPRESSA which happens to be OEM'd by Ricoh.  I'm guessing Xante may be ending the relationship with Okidata?  If that's the case I can see why, I've seen two placements of Xante's Illumina (Okidata engine) and both print shops abandoned the systems because they couldn't find a reliable service organization to service the product properly. Enough on Xante.

I fell in love with the first generation model which was the Ricoh C811DN and then the second gen which was the Ricoh C821DN and I'm thinking the Ricoh C831DN will be the color laser printer of choice where users need excellent quality, variety of media than can be used, reliability and backed by a powerful dealer service network.

Actually there are two models to choose from, the SPC830DN (45 page per minute print speed) and the SPC831DM (55 page per minute print speed).  To keep this simple we're going to concentrate on the specs for the Ricoh SPC831DN.

The Specs at a Glance:

Ricoh A4 Envelope Printer to the Rescue

I may be rehashing some information here, however I was ecstatic on how a Ricoh SPC431DN Color printer performed a few weeks ago.

Ever since I saw the first envelope press from Xante, I've wanted to be able to sell these.  For those of us in the know the Okidata C9800 is the engine of choice for Xante, PSI and Oki themselves. To make a long story short, these systems will print up to A3 (11x17), take super thick stock and have an EFI Fiery built into the system for color matching.  Pricing, well anywhere from $17K-$22K, a few years back I knew a print shop that picked up one up at a show for about $14.8  The claim to fame is that you'll print full color envelopes at 36 per minute, the cost for toner (color) would be about .02 cents (since you are print a small logo) and you could have a customer envelope feeder and conveyor.  Each of these companies also added a few other tweaks to the system.

Commercial Trade Printer Helps Me Out

Since we've got that out of the way, a few years ago I met a commercial printer who just prints envelopes for the trade. He has at least three of the OKI C9800's with the feeders.  I wasn't able to sell him anything however we hit it off since I was intrigued with envelope presses and how you could take an ordinary color laser printer and tweak it so the system could run envelopes all of the time.

Just about a year ago I asked this commercial printer if he would test a Ricoh SPC431DN for me, I was curious if this system could print envelopes without wrinkles and not misfeed.  We ran the test with a envelope feeder he had, we disconnected the by-pass tray and the Ricoh C431DN ran all of the envelopes without misfeeding and without wrinkles.  I then asked about the percentages of sizes of envelopes that he prints, I wanted to know what was the most common.  He replied that just about 75% of his work is with DL10's and smaller.

Existing Customer Emails Me

Fast forward to about a month ago, one of my clients emailed me and asked if I could supply a system that would print envelopes for this mailings. he had been in touch with Pitney Bowes, however Pitney wanted him to sign a ridiculous 69 month lease for something like $250 for a Pitney Bowes envelope printer.  Since I had the previous experience with the Ricoh SPC431DN, I figured it was worth the time to investigate.  I researched the Pitney Bowes Envelope printer (sorry I forget the model number) and it seems the printer was nothing more than a noisy (saw a video of the system on youtube) inkjet system.  The out put speed was fast, however it was inkjet and the cost was over $17K!

My Testing

I went back to my customer asked for any appointment and found out that his needs are to print 2,000-2,500 envelopes at a time and they would be doing a mail merge from an excel database and a database in PB smartmailer (was not made aware of this until later). I asked for a file from the customer and they emailed me an excel database. Luckily we had a Ricoh SPC431DN in the showroom, but it was only equipped with one paper tray.  In the next 90 minutes I printed off 200 or so envelopes without a hitch, no wrinkles no misfeeds, and the quality was awesome.

Sales Issues

In order to put together a viable solution for the customer, I had to configure the system with three additional paper trays.  However I was not able to test the system with the additional paper trays.  From past experience I knew that I could set each paper tray to due a "roll over", meaning that when one tray was empty, the envelopes would then pull from tray two, then three and four.  I made an assumption that if the system was capable of printing from one tray without issues then all of the other trays would work also (I crossed my fingers). So when I was ready for the install, I knew that I had to change all of the paper tray sizes to DL 10, change the media setting for each tray to envelope #1 and then set the auto "roll over" for each tray. I would also present a 36 month lease and also add in a maintenance agreement for the system with no toner. As far as the quantity of envelopes. I figured that each tray could hold about 100 envelopes since and envelop is three sheets of paper.  Thus with four trays we could load 400 envelopes.

The Presentation

Probably the best thing

Digital A3 Envelope Press from Ricoh? I Think....

I've been around this business long enough to know a good thing when I see it.  My roots are in the Print4Pay market of the office equipment business.  My first introduction to the Print4Pay business was when I began selling the Minolta 450Z analog copier to print shops, advertising agencies, newspaper and basically any company that needed to reduce or enlarge a document by 1/10th of 1%. Gosh darn those where the good ole days right?

In the past few years dedicated "digital" envelope presses have emerged from the likes of Xante, Oki and a few other third party suppliers.  If you're not familiar with these devices I'll make it short and sweet, it's a tweaked OKI  Color LED (Laser Emitting Diode) print engine with A3 (up to 11x17 print) print capability.  These LED (technically not laser, but is laser quality or better, depends on who you ask) are then married with an envelope feeder attachment   and then an exit conveyor attachment.  The feeder feeds envelopes into the by-pass area of the paper feed system.  There you have it, a digital press that can produce 4 color envelopes with for consumables of about 2 cents each.

Price...., the systems are pricey, with  most models that will range from $16k-$22k per system.  You have to see a whole lotta envelopes to make up that kinda cash.  If the price was right for these systems, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that every print shop and CRD would have one.  The fact is the price is not right and not every print shop has one or can afford to have one. 

Ricoh HQ Duplicator on Steroids w/Envelope Feeder

I just ran across a thread on the net in reference to someone needing additional information about a Ricoh Digital Duplicator and if that system was capable of printing envelopes. I've had Digital Duplicators in print shops for a number of years and all of these printers are using these to print envelopes along with various other documents.

The Ricoh HQ9000 is capable of stacking about 100 envelopes and you can print to the device with either a PC or MAC. The one draw back is that you can only print single color envelopes, but the quality and reliability is awesome. At 150 pages per minute, you really have to baby sit the duplicator,  if you're doing runs of 500 - 10,000, again the feeder only takes 100 envelopes or there about. Cost? jesh....cost has be something like .0001 when you are doing runs of 1,000 or more.

Anyway, back to the thread about the envelope feeder on the duplicator. Take a look at the video from straight shooter, they have a device that will work with the Ricoh HQ9000 for long runs.

-=Good Selling=-