Are New Sharp Copiers any good?

[lorenrupe]

I am looking at picking up the Sharp Copier line and was just wondering what Techs who work on them every day think of their new machines? I used to sell and Service them but that was about 15 years ago. Which models do you like or hate? How are their new 8X14 Color machines, I think they are called the Fronteir Series?
Thanks!

[ZOOTECH]

Any model in the MX series, including the Frontier, are user and tech friendly. BLI's line of the year two out of the last 3 years should tell you something about the newer Sharps. Don't base your opinion on the older Sharps, there has been considerable improvement in overall design IMHO.

[glewisme]

I agree with ZOOTECH ! These are great machines period! We"ve got a couple frontiers out there with over 30k on them in less than a year an other than performing the finisher mods there really haven't been any issues.

[johnbla]

Agree with the others...

Much nicer and CQ is good for a Business class machine.

Have several hundred of the MX range in the field, some with upto 900k on the clock, just keep the Firmware current (nice & easy via USB port).

[serviceman]

We just picked up the line and so far, love it. We haven't had any issue's whatsoever (again, we JUST picked up the line though), but everything seems tech friendly.

[OMD-227]

Anything in the MX and MXM series machines, are the best thing Sharp has ever done.
I completely agree with everyone, that you must not automatically think of, or remember anything Sharp did before these machines came out, because you will have the wrong opinion before you even see the machine.
Alot of R&D obviously went into these machines and they have proven to be an excellent box. For entry level, to semi-color production, through to full B/W production on the Herc's, they are brilliant across the board. The newest series is based on the same engine design as the first MX series, so that says something right there.
Very easy to service and support. Long life consumables, most of which easily perform alot longer than specified.
The MXC Frontier series are OK, but a little on the cheaply built side. The same design principle is there from the MX machines, but try not to install these in a mid to high use environment. They should only replace a desktop color laser situation. But for everything else, flog them 'til they die.

[lorenrupe]

Thanks for the input! To me it goes a lot further if Techs tell you they are good than a Salesman!

[tmaged]

In my opinion, they are the best thought out, most technician friendly machines out there. We carry Sharp & Kyocera. I like the Sharp machines a little better, part of that is because I've got 10 years experience with them & not as much with Kyocera. If Sharp had the Kyo warranty, we'd probably be a Sharp single line dealer.

[Coptech]

Interesting comments. I spent 6 years with a Sharp dealer and hated the products. I thought their engineers failed to use their heads. The original MX machines had major trouble with transfer belt cleaning because they put the cleaning unit on top of the belt hoping to brush the toner up instead of using gravity like the rest of the world. I didn't get the duplex gate that is not driven. The paper muscles it out of the way and it drops with gravity after paper passes so that when paper reverses direction, it goes on the top of the gate, It seemed that the doc feed rollers were very short lived and the PM indications were ridiculous showing one code at a time until the previous maint cose was cleared. When I left, they were still battleing the 550/620/700s overfilling the waste toner and sounding like a machine gun. The fusers on those machines had not hot roller bushing and the bearings would come apart like clockwork. The bearing side shell retaining ring would be spinning on the fusing lamps just flirting with shorting the lamps AC to ground. Sharp was very innovative as far as being ahead of the competition with things like the on-board qwerty keyboard and the USB thumb drive printing, but I think I would have liked to face a few engineers and ask them "what the hell were they thinking?" As mentioned by the previous posters, they gained great strides since the older metal screws into plastic framed machines and nightmare drive systems but I felt they still had room for improvement. These are just my thoughts and it is easy to see by previous posts that I am in a minority with those opinions.

[tmaged]

"These are just my thoughts and it is easy to see by previous posts that I am in a minority with those opinions."
That's the good thing about our country, you can have your own opinion. If we all had the same opinion, we'd all be after the same woman.

[OMD-227]

These are just my thoughts and it is easy to see by previous posts that I am in a minority with those opinions.

Not necessarily......

I agree that the first series MX had their issues. Dont even start me with everything before that in color.......

BUT....

There have been ALOT of improvements, modifications, bulletins and firmware fixes since then. They are pretty much bullet-proof now, and work great.
The longer they are out there, the more people tend to like them.
As Zootech said, they have got BLI line of the year twice now, so that says alot.

Things have changed alot now with the MX & MXM machines. You would really like working on them nowadays.

[glewisme]

Amen !!!!

[glewisme]

Yeah they're light years ahead of the good old ARBC series.What a piece of crap that series was !!!

[Pete Gossett]

I should probably chime in here since we just picked up Sharp as a second line about a year ago. We've been a Konica Minolta dealer for a number of years, and I also have a lot of Canon experience, some Ricoh and Xerox...and just about anything else that passes paper.

I've worked on enough of the older Sharps already to know I don't care much for them, but the new models are much, much better. I still feel Canon has the most tech-friendly and useful service modes(sims, whatever you choose to call them), as you don't really need to know where to look for something, since the menus are so intuitive. I find Konica Minolta to be second, and Sharp 3rd. Again, the new MX and MXM series do allow you to browse the service menus somewhat, but your really need to know the Sim number to be efficient.

From a nut & bolt construction/design standpoint, I haven't really had to tear apart the Sharps enough yet - which may be saying something right there, although we don't have that many in the field, and only a couple running any volume.

[fernendo]

Anything in the MX and MXM series machines, are the best thing Sharp has ever done.
I completely agree with everyone, that you must not automatically think of, or remember anything Sharp did before these machines came out, because you will have the wrong opinion before you even see the machine.
Alot of R&D obviously went into these machines and they have proven to be an excellent box. For entry level, to semi-color production, through to full B/W production on the Herc's, they are brilliant across the board. The newest series is based on the same engine design as the first MX series, so that says something right there.
Very easy to service and support. Long life consumables, most of which easily perform alot longer than specified.
The MXC Frontier series are OK, but a little on the cheaply built side. The same design principle is there from the MX machines, but try not to install these in a mid to high use environment. They should only replace a desktop color laser situation. But for everything else, flog them 'til they die.

I was thinking of getting a MX3100N for the office. We do about 7000 prints per month. Do you think this would be a suitable option or are we printing too much for this to cope?

Thanks

> Lewis