I am the trained iGen3 operator at the shop I work at. We have had numerous problems (all avoidable) that involved me being forced to run offset gloss, guillotine cut paper, etc..

There has been some improvement (after a few harrowing near deadline misses) but I don't think we are all together about using the right stocks.

Does anyone have some good advice about what to say to get people convinced? The people involved are long-time offset guys and are used to thinking that if it runs through the machine it works fine. The long-term maintenance and quality issues don't seem to be understood by them.

I understand your plight. We purchase Mill cut paper whenever possible but we run a combination of shop cut paper where the size needed is not available in a mill cut and several different brands and sizes of Mill Cut stocks. However we have found that not all Mill cut paper is created equal it is best to use the trial and error method and find what stock works best for your Igen and your workflow. The Recommended paper list is a good starting point in finding a stock that works for you. We use all non X brands papers 95% are listed on the RML and we are still told time to time that some of our problems are caused by our "Non"-RML paper, even though the paper we are running is on the RML (This is because one paper in this familiy has minor warning in one weight category, which we never run). We have found the Mill Cut paper is not necessarily that much more expensive that buying large sheets and cutting them ourself. Your buyer can negotiate with your Paper Sales rep for volume discounts, especially if you are going to be purchasing large amounts of paper from them.


Our Paper Horror story:
I had a paper rep who wanted us to try their House Brand of coated text weight stock - they gave us a very competitive price, too. We ran a sample ream and was satisfied with the quality, so we ordered a skid to run a job on and throughly test the paper. This is where our nightmare began as they did not store the paper in small lifts boxed by the mill. The individual wrapped reams were stagger stacked on a skid. We had defects galore from the weight of the paper creating microsopic indents in the paper where a ream wrapper was staggered accross the ream below and leaving an impression in the paper. Needless to say we sent the paper back and to this day that rep still keeps trying to sell us on this paper - we keep saying NO WAY!.

With a different brand of paper, I have received poorly cut paper in a Mill wrapped ream where I had 3+ sizes of paper in a single ream.