Risograph Printing
The Morecambe Community Riso Press is a not-for-profit run CIC.
All proceeds go towards ink and paper stocks, and the running of the Risograph machine. We are based at, and supported by
The Good Things Collective in Morecambe.
We have a one drum SF5350 Risograph machine with 6 colours.
Black, Blue, Flourescent Pink, Yellow, Bright Red & Green.
The Riso inks are non-toxic and made from rice bran oil, and come
in a range of vibrant colours. They are slightly translucent, so when the colours overlap you get a third colour in your print.
The Risograph Machine
The Risograph is a stencil duplicating machine. Designed in the 80's by the Riso Kagaku Corporation for high volume printing.
It looks like a photocopier and works in a similar way to screen printing, but producing much quicker results! So it's great for printing affordable productions of posters, zines and illustrations. Max size for printing is A3.
Layers
The Risograph prints one colour at a time. The ink canister is loaded into a Riso drum which is loaded into the machine.
When the first layer of your image has been printed, you change the ink colour, then print your second layer on top.
This is where the miss aligning magic happens!
Digital Printing
You can send your images to print from digital formats. If you save your images as greyscale you get an idea how the tones & shades of your image will look. Black areas will print darker, and grays will print lighter, in a similar way to newsprint.
Analogue Printing
The Riso can also scan images to print. This is great for drawings, mark making, collages and images created using other print methods. You can choose different settings for a halftone effect or for finely drawn lines.
The Riso can enlarge or decrease images. MAX size is 410mm x 287mm [ a bit smaller than A3 ]
RECYCLED
Paper
The Riso prints best on uncoated paper, so recycled paper is ideal! We have a small varied stock of recycled paper from 80g - 250g [ please email if you would like the price list. ]
Or you can bring your own uncoated paper, minimum 70g or 250g max.
Embracing Mistakes!
The Riso IS NOT a perfectly accurate printing machine!
Even though digital, does give more accurate results, prints are often not perfectly aligned, but the mis match of lines, colours and random marks is sometimes where the beauty lies!
The plant based inks are particular to Riso, they take longer to dry and the machine doesn't use heat to dry prints.
Because of this, there can be paper feed marks and spots where the ink has rubbed.
We can do our best to avoid this, but the Riso Paper Feed Mark has now become a classic look!
You Print
If you want to learn more and have a go at Riso printing, we run various workshops including a beginners/induction workshops.
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You can then join the Riso Club to get access to the machine and print your own designs.
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We Print
If you would like us to print for you, please drop us
a line to discuss all the options.
