I know Xerox rates the iGen to produce up to 6,600 impressions/hr based on 8.5 x 11 stock 4/0. The next speed rating is at 3,000 impressions/hr based on larger paper dimensions. Specifically paper ranging from 17 to 18 inches in its process direction.

Based on Xerox's ratings there are three factors that affect the speed of the machine...1. size of stock 2. whether printing one or two sided and 3. orientation of the stock. How much are these factors affecting your iGen's speed?

For example, if printing 12 x 18 two sided is it unreasonable to expect the iGen to print at 3,000 or 2,900 IPH?

Do you know how fast your iGen is printing? Do you know what pitch rate your performing at?


*the above all applies to a 110 license

Would be interesting to see where others stand on this.

Paul

Paul,

Welcome to the forum. I just wanted to point out two other major factors in Igen speed and see if you had any thoughts on them.

1. Percentage of coverage.
2. Inline finishing. Equipment like a booklet maker that is sold as being able to run at rated speed.

Hello,

Two very good points.

1. Coverage will affect print speed, especially heavy coverage. My question would be....by how much? For example we run a job in our shop on a daily basis that has a block of solid coverage but the rate of printing seems to be very inconsistent. We've printed the same job at 2,700 IPH or as low as 2,000 IPH. I'm amazed that the speed can fluctuate that much in the matter of a day. Is that digital consistency?

2. Inline finishing is something that I personally have little to no experience with. I thought I read something from Xerox that the iGen or perhaps the feeder will automatically adjust it's speed based on the speed of the finishing device. So in theroy the iGen will slow down to compensate for the speed of the device on the back end to avoid a lovely traffic jam of paper, books, and what not.

Paul S.

Speed of an iGen3 is not something one can easily predict. Since the machine controls its speed, it is a fixed speed, but it skips "pitches" or frames or pages to compensate for image quality adjustments or purging of toner depending on the type of job.

Things that effect speed:
-Paper (especially if it is prone to curling or jams frequently)
-Ink Coverage (low coverage will slow it down, based on how you set purge while run or the NVM's for the toner conc control)
-Inline finishing (will skip pitches if the DFA tells the iGen3 to do so)
-Maintainence and Part Life (age of developer, PR Belt age, etc)
-Customer expectation of Quality (have to stop the press to deal with artifacts and do maintainence)
-On press proofing

All these things add up to a very subjective speed measurement, and frankly, everyone's calculation of speed will be off.

When we had our iGen3 we used 80% of rated speed as a guide, but there were times we struggled to get 50% of rated speed or less depending on the above needs. What I can tell you is we almost never got above 80% of rated speed (rated speed for 12x18 paper not the 110 goofiness on letter sized). It worked for estimating costs, but not for estimating run time, we had to use our experience to guess what the type of job would require. Long runs became painful if we thought we'd do 80% and because of jams or high quality expectations, we were only hitting 25% of rated speed.

The iGen3 isn't unique in these issues of predicting speed. It just has a lot of uncontrollables that contribute to slow downs and a lot of controllables that can cause slowdowns as well.

Speed is one thing. Patrick doesn't address speed, really; he addresses productivity.

Paul, you are operating under some misconceptions. What you need to do is find a copy of the Customer Expectation Document for your iGen3. It outlines precisely the functionality of the machine under all conditions. In fact, it is a legal document--so don't dismiss it as marketing crap.

Your sales rep or analyst can get you a CED, if you can't get one from your shop management. (They had to sign that before the iGen3 order could be processed, so no doubt they have a copy.)

And Paul, size of the stock and orientation of the stock are one and the same thing.

Actually I did address speed, since the igen3 really runs at one fixed speed, besides enhanced image permanence mode, it skips pitches to compensate.

Also, size of stock and orientation are not the same thing. Run 8.5x14 inch paper short edge feed and it runs half as fast as running it long edge feed. Size and orientation play a very important role in speed.

Interesting comments.

We constantly run a heavy coverage 12 x 18 job on a daily basis in our shop that average 2,500 IPH or 83% of the rated 3,000 IPH. Thats on average. Last week the same job ran at 2,790 IPH or 93% of rated speed. Yesterday the job ran at 2,632 IPH or 88% of rated speed. With an average of over 80% how can this be considered operating under misconceptions on performance? Especially when these facts are coming straight from the log file of our iGen. The 3,000 IPH or Pitch Rate speed of 5 are all derived from the iGen Operators Manual, not the sales staff.

Good point about size of stock and orientation, they are indeed two seperate variables and thats why I included both of them. Paper dimension in the process direction helps define the pitch rate you will be operating under.

You need to find out what's going on, then. There's no real reason you're not getting 3000 IPH out of that job. Is the press stopping for image quality adjustments? There may be some workflow variables that we don't know about, that you haven't told us, so take it with a grain of salt.





Orientation is merely another way of saying size; you're worried about the size of the sheet in the process direction, that's all. How you think of the sheet and how the iGen processes the sheet can be two radically different things, depending on how you orient the same size sheet.

You should never orient the sheet for lower productivity.

Elmo,

What you are describing is exactly what orientation is. 8.5x14 and 14x8.5 are exactly the same sheet size; however, they imply different orientations or if you prefer, process directions.

Bottom line is that orientation is a significant factor.



3000 IPH is virtually unattainable. If you run light area cover toner purge is required. If you have a booklet maker, the machine cycles down after the first set. That right there blows away rated speed!

Cheers,
John

I wouldn't say 3000 IPH is unattainable in the least.

Of course, it takes a careful look at your workflow sometimes to make sure you're getting what you want/need out of the equipment. As you said, maybe inline bookletmaking isn't appropriate for some reason. So don't do it.

Toner purge time is WAY down over previous versions. And if you're running an oversize sheet, you're smart and you put ink in the trim area to use it up and prevent toner purge. In fact, I can't wait for that to be a press operator's job...

Elmo,

Your missing the point. No where in the CED does it talk about needing to maintain particular amounts of coverage to maintain speed. The booklet maker (sold by Xerox with the press) is described as being able to run at the rated speed of the press. Why would I eliminate inline finishing from my workflow as you suggested? Why not make the machine achieve rated speed. Hell, even 75% of rated speed would be an improvement.

Cheers,
John

Plus, I challenge anyone from Xerox or associated with Xerox to prove the iGen3 runs at rated speed. The CED you mention even states that is not a reality. Read it closely.

They have made some significant improvements to the purge while run vs toner purge. But it is still an option for maintaining consistent quality vs closer to rated speed. You still sacrifice quality and speed to get consistent quality out of an igen3.

Plus, if you composite the time it is actually running say, over 1 week 8 hours a day for a total of 40 hours. You will never get 40 straight hours out of it. In fact, if you try, you will come to expect less then 80% uptime out of it during that 40 straight hours of operation. Which loosely translates into 8 hours of maintainence, jam clearance, paper loading, etc for every 40 hours of operation, or at least 1 out of 5 days a week you aren't running at 3000IPH.

If you just simply take the current speed the machine is running at in any given moment, yes, it should be at 3000IPH, but when you factor the expecations and experience of running any digital press. It is impossible to run at rated speed for extended periods of time. Shoving trees through metal and mostly plastic will result in things breaking and that leads to downtime.

Proof is in the numbers, look at the speed of the iGen3, 110ipm (letter sized which if you are running anything larger it slows down ie, 12x18 runs at 50ipm). Take that times 60 = 6600 / hour. 40 hours in 1 week = 264000 impressions / week. Take 3 shifts = 792,000 3 shift impressions per week. Now assume 52 weeks in a year = 41,184,000 impressions at rated speed running around the clock for a year. Now divide that by 12 months in a year = 3,432,000 max impressions an igen3 can do working 3 shifts around the clock only 5 days a week. 3,432,000 vs the average igen3, by Xerox's own published Wal Street numbers, is 500,000 impressions / month. That is only 14% of rated speed on average and that's not even running the weekends. That means half of the iGen3s out there are doing better then this and half are not. According to Xerox's Wall Street numbers, there are some iGen3s doing over 1 million impressions / month. None have done more then 2 million... So, at 1 million / month = 29% and at 2 million = 58% which is a max. So tell me, is 3,000iph realistic in calculating what you can do? When you are only able on average to use 14% of the machine in any given average month with a few achieving 29% and a max of 58%. (I have removed weekends from this calculation, otherwise these numbers would be even lower) This represents all the non-running items it takes to operate an iGen3, such as doing maintainence, clearing jams, startup time, rebooting the press, press cycle up/down, toner purging, emptying waste bottles, replacing filters, troubleshooting image quality artifacts, proofing (big performance hit there) and many more items, etc.

So when the average iGen3 is only seeing a 14% utilization, when it runs, it probably is running at 3,000iph but what do people use for longer runs. If you use 3000iph for a 40+ hour run you will be 8 hours over based on expectations, but if you run for any longer, you get closer to 50%.

Yes, it does. When did you get your press? I can quote you the relevant part of that specific CED your company signed.

The current one says:

* on page 6, "up to XXX ppm, XXXX per hour". Up to. Clue #1.

* on page 15, the Area Coverage entry says: "Expect a reduction in performance of 3-8% of planned productivity when running jobs with low area coverage. Pauses for adjusting print quality are an indication that the system may be adjusting for low area coverage--the pause may be as long as 3 minutes in this case."

* on page 20, under System Performance--Print Quality Adjustments: "For jobs with low area coverage (<5% in any single separation), these pauses could be as long as 3 minutes, and occur every 50 minutes."

I'd say it covers the coverage issue completely.

This is why every operator should be present when this document is presented to the buyer. All too often, though, this document is glossed over and/or presented only to the guy who signs the order--and that's meaningless. At the very least, this document should be hanging on the press at all times. Many are the times the operations people plan a job without knowing some crucial detail of the big picture, and are caught by surprise.





The devil is in the details. Like Patrick says, while it may run at rated speed while it's running, does it have any other issues like cycling down after the first job? Or after X jobs? Or whatever.

Frankly, the only reason for an inline booklet maker (or any inline finishing) is for variable jobs. Absent those, any shop would be better off with offline finishing.






But it can do rated speed, and for most people and most jobs does do rated speed. If you can't get rated speed out of the press on any job, you need to look carefully at your workflow and operation.

Now, another part of the CED says:

* page 8, the section titled "Availability, Productivity, and Time to Production": this talks about service uptime, customer maintenance, and productivity in great detail. Look it up.

With this information in hand, along with everything else in that document, and with your information about your jobs and your workflow, you'll be able to closely estimate your impressions per shift or impressions per month--and you won't be caught by surprise.


Patrick: yes, there are many doing over 1 million. There are even many doing over 2 million/month. It's been awhile since you've been at Xerox, apparently, and you're using very old information to spread FUD in order to make yourself feel good about your Nexpress decision.

Please, if this is a Nexpress-specific forum for your own pleasure, disclose that fully and frequently so that readers may assess the information you put forth.

As you can see above, I bolstered what you said--right up to the point where you come out and say none are doing more than a million a month.





You forget to mention that many of those runs are rush jobs. Any digital press that can handle high-value rush jobs at a 100% surcharge can pay for itself with 100K/month.

elmo,

first off, i do not have an igen. nor do i work with one any longer. i have read numerous versions of the ced for that product and others. it is not true that all sales require a signed ced. i know of multiple exceptions to that rule. additionally, sales generally glazes over it as another legal document for management to sign and rarely provides it proactively before the sale is finalized to the end user (working managers, supervisors or operators).

i agree that inline finishing is not a good idea in most cases. sometimes not even on variable output. unfortunately leading sellers of digital production equipment sell a different picture of the equipment and capabilities. the average sales rep would rather sell and inline finisher that will run at rated speed then sell a machine minus finishing and let another company sell finishing. that is just the facts of life.

merry christmas,
john

ALL orders require a signed CED, up front.

But as you say and as I agree, it's all too frequently glossed over when it should instead be presented to everyone very carefully on a new sale, where no one has any direct experience with one.

(Even additional units in an existing customer require a signed CED with the order.)





all too true...

Not trying to spread FUD, in fact just the opposite. All digital presses are plagued with the fact they all run at a fixed speed and are effected by maintainence and operational slowdowns.

It is a critical element when it comes to estimating costs and run times that the CED does not address. These are the things printers NEED to understand in looking into digital presses, Nexpress, iGen3, Indigo, Xeikon, whatever. You can't run it faster, but you can run it slower is some cases.

The question wasn't how fast the nexpress or indigo is running, it was on the iGen3. This forum will remain open to all forms of digital print, regardless of how biased you, Elmo3 seem to be in defending Xerox and attempting to accuse me of bias. Why not come out and explain your role with Xerox and your background so we can understand why you are so prone to defend the iGen3 and quote Xerox information. I'm assuming you have permission to post sections from the CED from Xerox.

Absolutely it addresses that. Again, I refer the reader to page 8 of the current CED: the section titled "Availability, Productivity, and Time to Production".

"SERVICE UPTIME: Service uptime is anytime the system is *not* down for service." That means the machine is in the operator's hands. "*Average* service uptime of iGen3 systems is currently in the 80-90% range when running 400-600,000 letter equivalent pages per month in one or two shift operation..."

Seems pretty clear to me so far.

"CUSTOMER MAINTENANCE: Daily equipment maintenance and calibration are included in service uptime." That's pretty clear. Then it goes on to say that ON AVERAGE, allow 30 minutes per shift for maintenance and 20 minutes per shift for calibration. That's 50 minutes per shift when it's not running.

So there's the productivity statement with regard to maintenance. And the other operational slowdown is ink coverage; as I said above, the CED clearly discloses that in not one but TWO places.

We all understand that these are "critical elements when it comes to estimating costs and run times," as you say; now, tell me why you say that these are things 'the CED does not address". ????

No question the shop needs to know these things, and that's why they are disclosed in the CED. If the shop chooses to ignore these things (many don't; many go over that CED with a fine tooth comb), that's the shop's choice and issue to deal with.

Question: does the NexPress have a similar document available to its customers? What does it say?

My goal is to defend the truth, plain and simple. Please tell me where in this thread or anywhere else that I have not stated the truth.

You, Patrick, on the other hand, came out and insisted--despite plain evidence to the contrary--that "these are things the CED does not address." I'm still waiting for you to tell me, given what I've posted to this thread, how the CED "does not address" these items.

Truth, Patrick. Keep it truthful. When you say blatantly false things, you'll be called on it every time.

Your stretching of the truth and making false statements extends into your discussion of the NexPress; one wonders why you can't simply let the facts fall where they may. Perhaps that puts your chosen NexPress in a light you feel uncomfortable working in?

Yes there is a similar document for the Nexpress. Oh and how come Xerox doesn't post this CED on their website for everyone to read? Just the owners on signing? Who's responsibility is it to get the latest CED to the customer? And if it is so critical, why doesn't Xerox require every operator to sign it? Also, what happens when the iGen3 doesn't perform up to the CED? Do they fix it in the next version of software?

If you care to have a discussion about the Nexpress I would be more then happy to engage in the facts about it.

You apparently put so much weight in some glorious document "the CED" and discount user / owner experience with the product and acuse me of being false in my statements of fact. I owned an iGen3 for 3 years. Ran it, maintained it and experienced first hand these issues.

I have granted you that Xerox has made improvements to the product, I have my CED which varies greatly from the CED you quote. So I can only operate under the information provided to me by Xerox.

Don't confuse written promises from a vendor for real world press operation / ownership experience.

Now, lets get into the heart of the matter. Why don't you come clean and tell our readers who you are and what your role is at Xerox. And why you seem to insist on defending the iGen3 so much, or atleast wanting to argue with me. You probably have never operated an iGen3 in a real world environment, instead hide behind the CED as fact.

I am actually a big fan of the iGen3, it did a great job for us as it built a business for my company that didn't exist 3 years ago. The nexpress just offered us better quality without sacrificing performance or anything else. I don't regret nor need to defend my purchase decision, I let my customers speak for that. There are many choices for digital presses out there, and no one person or one opinion or one document (the CED) can solve everyone's problems.

If you don't think that 3 years of owning an iGen3 qualifies me to answer iGen3 related questions then you clearly miss the point of this site. We started it to help users and potential buyers get first hand accounts that are beyond the FUD that vendors provide. You can't handle the negatives of your iGen3, instead you hide behind a document. Every buyer of digital presses must weight the positives with the negatives. We hope that Digitalprintforums.com will help in that cause.

If you want to engage in a Nexpress discussion, I suggest you start a thread in the Nexpress area. So, Elmo3, come clean, and let everyone know who you are and what your role is, and most importantly, why do you defend the iGen3 so much?

You missed the whole point, or else you're deliberately trying to obfuscate it.

Your claim was that Xerox doesn't disclose these things. The facts say different.

Why do you continue your claim in the light of the actual facts which clearly say otherwise?

This has nothing to do with the NexPress at this point. You have some extremely strong desire to disparage the iGen3 for some reason--to the point of saying things that flat-out aren't true.





I never said that. What disqualifies you from answering iGen3 questions, though, is your stated practice of simply ignoring the facts, the truth, and stating things that flat out aren't true.

You may discuss whatever you like, but you just shot your own credibility in the foot. I'm sure people will come here and ask about all sorts of things, but you'll continue to state as fact things that aren't true about iGen--and that brings into question the things you state as fact about your NexPress.

You're not doing Kodak any favors...

I never said Xerox doesn't disclose these things, in fact, simply doing search will yield many times in which I refer people to the CED.

What the CED doesn't cover is what customers experience over the time of actually operating the machine. I am just sharing my experiences and challenges owning and operating an iGen3. These are facts, undisputable and well documented.

Just because the sticker on my car says I should get 18 MPG doesn't mean that I will. How I drive the car determines that and they can't control that. For the purposes of this question and answering it, that's like saying that you should get 18MPG and planning a trip with only enough money to drive 100 miles, yet getting stuck in traffic and running out of gas because the manufacturer said I should get 18MPG but because of traffic you didn't... Who's fault is that? Not the manufacturer, its bad planning.

Running at rated speed vs estimating run time are 2 different issues. I only stated that Xerox does not avise customer on how to estimating run time, only deal with rated speed. Your quotes from the CED proved that. Each customer needs to establish their evnironment and what their method for calculating run time is based on experience. If they go off rated speed or some percentage there of, they could be way off depending on the "traffic". That is my point, plain and simple.

The CED holds no legal agreement nor standard to run the iGen3 to. It is a guidelining document, used to help a customer understand what to expect not a legal binding agreement how to run an iGen3. Best example is paper, running non-standard stocks throughs expectations out the window, yet people will run non-standard / approved stocks.

Trying to accuse me of saying that Xerox doesn't disclose these things is vastly different then stating that I have, and many others have experienced differences then what the CED outlines. That is fact.

Now why won't you answer my question... What qualifies you to answer anything iGen3 related? Be honest with the readers and members here and explain your bias.

Elmo, please, show me where I wasn't stating the truth or facts. You claim I am lying but no where are you proving it.

Also, if other people are not experiencing the problems we went through with the iGen3 or Xerox has fixed those issues (and they have fixed a lot of the issues we had) then I'd love to know about it. After all, my volume continues to grow and will need to look at all the digital presses again to make the best decision. Since you seem to have access to this information, correct me where I am wrong, I really do appreciate it.

I am not here to advance some agenda for Kodak, nor provide a Kodak centric website. The purpose is to have user to user discussion. You are not a user of this equipment you represent the manufacturer and everyone needs to know your bias. You are not allowed to say anything negative about the iGen3. That is why user to user websites exist, to deal with the positives and negatives and weed out the bs. So thanks for your input, keep it up, but don't falsely accuse me of lying. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it, but saying I'm trying to do Kodak favors is flat out wrong. I have no interest in this, I want to share information and perspectives from the users and owners of these devices and technology. If you can't deal with that or be constructive in your participation, then go someplace else.

elmo,

it was me who said that xerox does not always disclose the ced or require it to be signed when equipment is sold. i know of multiple contracts that were signed without the ced being signed, required, presented or otherwise.

additionally, if i recall correctly the ced is supposed to be re-presented to and reviewed with the customer by the analyst for software upgrades. that seems to be a practice that is overlooked too often as well.

my concern is that if the document is so critical and all answering as you suggest, why is it such a low priority.

that is the purpose of these forums, to provide a user to user review / perspective of the operation of any equipment.

another thought / question comes to mind about the ced. what legal value does it have? i don't know of any way in which it is associated with the total satisfaction guarantee. i know of no examples of where a machine did not measure up to the ced where xerox refunded moneys or otherwise compensated the customer.

how can printers use this document to there advantage?

The back of the CED has the iGen3 Satisfaction Guarantee.

The CED, including the iGen3 Satisfaction Guarantee, is part of the sales contract.

Very interesting conversation. I hope no one is taking things personal ? I think that things like this are what makes forums like this great, everyone has a right to speak how they feel, for the most part uncessored. Let's just not get too personal and maintain a professional discussion on the subject.

I have worked on the Nexpress for 2 years and the Igen for 2 years+ and I think both are good machines but I will say that sometimes documentation and expectations are sometimes hard to reach whether you are on one of these machines of any machine for that matter. I think Patricks comment comparing it to MPG is a great example..

Lets not lose track of the fact that we are here to share ideas and opinions.. We don't have to agree.


Dale

I have a few thoughts and comments on the subject.

I have been working with iGen3s ever since they launched in 2003. At one point our company had the highest volume of iGen3 in Southern California, specifically in Orange County.

I have been to Rochester, had engineers come out from there 3 times, and have been visited by the XSIS team on numerous occasions.

Based on 10+ years of digital printing, I can honestly say that what a machine is rated for, and what it does in actual numbers, is always going to be 2 distinctly different numbers.

Every Xerox analyst will tell you that getting 80% out of your press is huge. On average, iGen customers get 50-60 percent.

So many factors go into how fast a press will operate:

-Operator Knowledge/Training
-Press Quality/Image Quality Adjustments (a HUGE factor in the speed of the press. The settings can be changed so that Print Quality Adjustments intervals are further apart - this is a MAJOR problem when it comes to running stocks like 12x18 and 14x20)
-Stock - some stocks are not designed to printed on a digital press
-Room Environment
-Xerox Technician - some techs are better than others.

Remember that they are rating the machine in a controled environment, not in a "print" environment.