Secondary Research - Risograph

Risograph

Risograph is a stencil duplication process, meaning that it is in the same family as Screen Printing, except that it was initially designed for business printing purposes. The machine, from the outside, looks just like a photocopier, but the guts are entirely different. Like an offset press, Risograph printers use Plates, or Masters (made from wax paper), which means that it prints one colour/one layer at a time. Each additional layer requires  an additional pass through the machine.

Turn Around Time

We do our best to work with your scheduling goals, but we are a small shop and get very busy at times. It’s always best to get in touch well in advance of your deadline, give us an idea of your job and when you’ll want it done by.

Small and simple jobs can be completed in as little as 3 days, while bigger publication jobs take anywhere from 1-3 weeks to complete.




How does the Risoprinter Work?

It is surprisingly simple. The paper makes a straight pass, from left to right, through the machine, while a rotating silk-screen-like drum unit pushes soy-based ink through the stencil master and onto the sheet, one side and one layer at a time. Much like a Mimeograph, the Risograph is based on Duplication technology.

Environmentally Friendly

Risograph prints are made with Soy Ink and because of the machine’s mechanical simplicity do not use very much energy (unlike photocopiers, which gobble up electricity with their hot hot fusers and elaborate paper paths). We like to work with salvaged papers and offcuts wherever possible, and use the super-duper eco-friendly Roland Enviro100 (LINK) as our primary house paper. Lastly, our manufacturing facilities are run out of a residential with little overhead and a small footprint. Nearly all of our equipment has been purchased used and little of it is electrical. Altogether we are trying to do our best within a rather wasteful industry.



Colour

Riso do not make cyan or magenta ink. Risograph printers are limited to a certain number of commercially available colours. It prints using specific spot colours so it is able to print colours that would be unachievable on digital printers, which use CMYK. These include gold or fluorescent pink. Beware that colour results do vary according to paper stock

Imperfections
 

The risograph is not perfect like a inkjet or laser printer. The prints will probably look different from what you see on your computer screen. There will be print marks, especially when printing more than one layer or double sided. But these can easily be rubbed off with a rubber.
Registration
Risographs are not designed for multiple colour printing, there will ALWAYS be a degree of mis-registration when printing several colours/ layers at the time, please bare this in mind when designing. Allow bleed and trapping to counter this.
Feed Marks
The Machine uses rubber tires to feed the paper into the press. If there is heavy ink coverage already on the page the riso will leave tyre marks on the sheet but these can easily be rubbed off with a rubber.
Double Sided Marks
When printing double sided the feed mechanism will push the sheets together as it feeds the paper, this results in a small mark in the centre of the feed edge again this can be removed with a rubber. If there is particularly heavy coverage the image can smudge slightly as it goes through the press to print the other side.

These are both created through risograph, these bottom one is made from tape although due to the printing one colour at a time this would of taken a long time. Due to all the different colours in both of these prints. The colours are not to a high quality also as they are quite faint and therefore you can see the colour underneath, due to the overlay of the geometric shapes.