It's getting lonely in here .

Am I realy the only Canon user on the forum?

Give it some time. We don't advertise so its up to word of mouth and the search engines to find us.

Canon isn't ever really considered when you talk about high end digital presses. But there are plenty of folks out there using Canon printers and they have had a great history in the full color digital world...

Best thing to do is try to start some conversations, people will find it eventually.

I ran a CLC 5000 for two years at a previous shop. It is one of the worst digital printers I think I've ever operated. When we first went to Canon to look at it (after they purchased it) I looked over the internal design and said, "It looks exactly like a Xerox Docucolour 40." Basically 15 year old technology.

My issues were:
- won't handle coated stocks or heavy card well
- painfully slow on cardstock
- colour is not repeatable, and tends to drift during print runs
- cardstock can only be run through bypass reliably
- extremely poor back/front registration
- poor colour to colour registration (mostly on cardstock)
- very unreliable

We had no end to problems with that machine, and we weren't even running high volume (about 25k/month). One week I had service out 5 days in a row.

It would make a fine office copier, running Powerpoint presentations on laser paper.

Our local Kinkos had two of them. Whenever I complained about things, they would counter with, "Well, Kinkos does such and such and they don't have these problems..." Then Kinkos replaced the CLC's with Xerox machines citing reliablity and speed as the main factors.

And I laughed. Then I found a new job in a shop with all Xerox gear.

So basically your saying you feel my pain

I just had a regional Canon service tech in from Chicago after having the machine down for 4 days. He seems to think they will work fine, he proceeds to tell me of a company that has 6 of them and they are cranking out covers for school books.

Looks like I'll have to keep this thing untill it's feesable to do a buy-out with Xerox.

Thanks for the feedback, would love to here from more folks as well.

Oh, I feel your pain. Only worse for me probaby, because I had left a previous position running a Xerox 2060. They told me that they were getting a 6060 and were going to do variable data, ect.

Imagine my elation when that 6060 turned out to be a CLC5000.

"We just need to show some volume to justify getting a Xerox box." So I busted my ass for almost two years, getting some pretty good numbers on the Canon (some months around 50k, mostly 12x18 cover through the bypass).

Then they bought a 40 inch press, and couldn't afford to upgrade the Canon. You know, because a 40 inch press totally makes sense in a market trending toward shorter runs and faster turnaround.

That's when I quit.

Some times I beging to think this CLC4000 will make it, we put 58K on last month all 12x18 80lb cover for variable data mailers, then it went down, lost a cyan laser and some other stuff.

I think I'll ride this lame horse as long as I can. You would think that having a tech here every other day will make our service company think twice and buy it back.

Maybe the Color Fairy will turn it into a 6060 someday

Oh, and my tips for that machine:

- I couldn't get gloss coated stock to run, but dull coated worked. 100# text you could run through the bypass set to heavyweight. 80# wouldn't pick off the fuser properly and would jam (badly). I ran tons of TopKote Dull 100# text through that machine.

- I could also run TopKote Dull 78# and 95# cover through the bypass. However this seemed to reduce the lifespan of many components within the machine (drums, ect). Expect to get to know your service tech.

- My best trick was a set of fishing weights that I used to weight down the feed rollers for the bypass tray. A lot of the time when you are feeding heavy stock those feed wheels can't get much grip. This results in either feed jams or poor registration in the feed direction. If you put weights on the top of the feed assembly deal, it helps them get some traction. Be careful if you are running coated stock, because if the wheels spin a little with the weight on them, they'll leave two little shiny marks (like a car doing burnouts). Basically use as little weight as possible in order to get consistent feeding.

- Calibrate before running a proof and before every job

That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure more will come to me.

I have run quite a bit of Stora Enso Futura Gloss in both text and cover, seems to run well. I am aware of the extra weight on the by-pass, we use a small box of staples.

Did you ever experience image skew? That seems to be the main problem... well that and top to bottom CQ. I just don't like the idea of having the image printed directly on the paper, I agree with xerox printing it on the transfer belt, then on the sheet. It seems like less chance of getting skew when you can get them both square.

Did you ever use the tray alignment? I think it is worthless, it doesnt adjust the sheet or tray, it seems to skew the image to compinsate for the machines skew what the hell good is that????

Thanks for letting me bend your ear, I appreciate it!

If you are talking about the 'tray alignment' on the Fiery, then yes it just rotates the image opposite the skew. And quadruples your rip times, at least. It's crap.

And yes, image skew always. I complained so much that they came and fitted this weird extension onto the end of the bypass tray. It did improve the skew a bit (didn't correct it entirely), but it looked pretty 'one-off', so I don't know if it's a standard thing or not. Maybe the local guys had it fabricated to shut me up, I don't know.

And the drums being in contact with the stock also has a large factor in their reliabiltiy. We were running large amounts of 12x18 95# cover and we were getting less than a quarter of the normal service life of the drums (that's what the tech told us).

I'll try to answer your questions, but I'll be in training for the 74 Karat for rest of this week and the next, response might be a little slow. That thing is a whole different ballgame...