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 4 colours.
Black, Blue, Flourescent Pink and Yellow.
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 to print your second layer.
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 photos. You can choose different settings for a bitmap effect or for finely drawn lines.
The Riso can enlarge or decrease images. MAX size is 408mm x 209mm [ a bit smaller than A3 ]
RECYCLED
Paper
The Riso prints best on uncoated paper, so recycled paper is ideal! We have a small stock of recycled paper 80g, 110g, 170g [ please email if you would like the price list. ]
Or you can bring your own uncoated paper, minimum 50g or 240g 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 sometimes the mis match of lines, colours and random marks is where the beauty lies!
The inks are plant based and non toxic which means they take longer to dry and the Riso does not use heat to dry the prints so there are sometimes paper feed marks and spots where the ink has rubbed.
We can do our best to avoid this although the 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 beginners/induction workshops.
​
You can then join the Riso Club to get access to the machine and print your own designs.
​
We Print
If you would like us to print for you, please drop us
a line to discuss all the options.
