At the time of writing this, I have the Konica Minolta 1060 around three months and in this article, I will share my first thoughts on what I think about it. What I like. What I don’t like, and if I think I have made the correct decision in purchasing it
Before you spend your hard-earned cash on a new piece of equipment, you are always going to want to see reviews. Unfortunately, when it came to these production presses, I could not find one single review. I searched all the search engines, I check YouTube, and I could not find one. So, I dived into the online forums to see what information I could dig out.
What I took away from the forums was that the Konica seemed to be the most reliable, the most cost efficient and owners generally seemed to be happy.
So, I searched online to see who supplied them in Ireland (for some reason they are called Develop production presses in Ireland) but I found two companies who could provide them.
One of these companies really only had newer models which was about €10,000 over my budget so I went with the older 1060 model.
The Konica Minolta 1060 was released in 2014 so the model I got was almost 10 years old, but I did manage to get a three-year service contract with it.
Cardstock goes into the bottom drawer to allow for a straighter path through the printer. Even though the specs on the printer state that the maximum is 300 gram, I run 350 gram through this bottom drawer, 100% of the time without any problems.
What I Like
The print quality is particularly good. Especially on the 170-gram silky type of paper that I use for flyers and leaflets. The Konica Minolta 1060 has a print resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi and can duplex print on 350-gram card stock. This is useful for doing business cards, wedding invitations, gift vouchers, greeting cards etc.
What I Don’t Like
I have a couple of gripes with the Konica Minolta 1060.
Gradients on the heavier card stock could be better. They are just not that smooth. It’s fine on the lighter 170-gram paper that I use for flyers but not on the 350 grams. For this reason, I tend to avoid using gradients on card stock.
I would love the ability to print banners on the 1060. The largest you can print is SRA3 and I do believe that the newer models allow banner printing.
It is great that the Konica 1060 can print booklets, but the problem is that it only allows this to occur on 81 – 91-gram paper which is your standard office paper really. You can give the printer the option to pull a cover from a different tray but again, if you use anything heavier than 81 to 91 grams, the Konica will not print it. However, there is a way around this.
When you put paper into one of the drawers on the Konica, the machine automatically picks up the size of that paper. It is down to you to input the weight on the paper. You could tell the printer a little lie here although I would not go to crazy. Yes, the Konica will print it. But will the booklet maker fold and staple it?
Finally, and I am sure if I were a bit more experienced with these machines, I could fix this problem, but the duplex printing is slightly off. My fix is to shift the second page five pixels to the right in Adobe InDesign to correct this.
Any Problems?
I guess with any piece of equipment that is almost 10 years old, you are going to run into problems.
The first problem I had occurred during the first week. I got an order in which I had to design and supply 500 booklets for a memorial mass. What was happening was that the centre page of the booklet was not folding nor stapling in the centre. I would say, from the order of 500 booklets, I would off thrown around 60 to 70 in the bin and redo them. These were 16-page booklets that were full of images on the inside, so it was a waste of a lot of paper, and a waste of a lot of toner. I did call the supplier about this, but their solution did not help.
Konica Monilta 1060 Booklet Maker
The second problem occurred, again with the booklet maker. I got a paper jam and removed the jammed paper from the booklet maker. As soon as I closed the door of the unit, I got a message on the screen telling me to call service. This error put the whole machine out of action, and I had to disconnect the booklet maker to use the printer again.
Luckily, the supplier was out the following day to fix it. As he was in the studio, I asked him about the problem I had with the centre page of some booklets not folding or stapling in the centre and he gave me a reason as to why it happens and what to do about it.
Static was building up and the last sheet of paper was not dropping into the folding and stapling unit fast enough (or something like that). So, he folded a sheet of a4 paper in such a way, then placed it on the unit so that the paper that was to be used for a booklet would tip against this a4 folded sheet, thus knocking it down into the folder & stapler unit. I have tried it since, and it works a charm.
Did I make the correct decision in purchasing the Konica Minolta 1060?
I would say yes, simply because I got the three-year service contract with it. The Konica Minolta set me back €15,000 (€3000 of this was VAT). I have not been keeping track, but I would say after three months, I would off have recuperated 1/5th of this and that is as a start-up. I would like to think that after the three-year contract is up, I would have a good chunk saved for a newer model. And if this is the kind of quality, they could product 10 years ago, what can they produce now?
You could find one cheaper on the buy and sell pages. I seen the exact same model on Done Deal for €8,500 but I just felt it was to big of a gamble spending that kind of money on an almost 10-year-old printer without some sort of a guarantee.
I would like to be capable of printing banners on it, plus I would like to be able to print booklets on heavier paper and allow for a heavier cover. But apart from that, I have been impressed with the Konica Minolta 1060 thus far.
I’ll update this article further down the line and if you have any questions, please feel free to write them in the comment section.