Risograph Printing

Risograph is a high-speed digital printing system manufactured by the  "Riso Kagaku Corporation" Riso Kagaku Corporation and designed mainly for high-volume   "Photocopier" photocopying and printing. Increasingly, Risograph machines have been commonly referred to as a RISO Printer-Duplicator, due to their common usage as a network  "Computer printer" printer as well as a stand-alone  "Duplicating machines" duplicator. When printing or copying multiple quantities (generally more than 20) of the same original, it is typically far less expensive per page than a conventional photocopier, laser printer, or inkjet printer. 

How a Risograph works

The underlying technology is very similar to a mimeograph. It brings together several processes which were previously carried out manually, for example using the Riso Print  

The original is scanned through the machine and a master is created, by means of tiny heat spots on a thermal plate burning voids (corresponding to image areas) in a master sheet. This master is then wrapped around a drum and ink is forced through the voids in the master. The paper runs flat through the machine while the drum rotates at high speed to create each image on the paper.

This simple technology is highly reliable compared to a standard photocopier and can achieve both very high speed (typically 130 pages per minute) and very low costs. A good lifespan for a risograph might involve making 100,000 masters and 5,000,000 copies.

The key master-making thermal head component is manufactured by  Toshiba. Similar machines to Risographs are manufactured by Ricoh,  All these other brands are now owned by Ricoh. Because the process involves real ink - like offset printing - and does not require heat to fix the image on the paper - like a photocopier or laser printer - the output from a risograph can be treated like any printed material. This means that sheets which have been through a risograph may happily go through a laser printer afterwards and vice-versa.

For schools, clubs, colleges, political campaigns and other short-run print jobs, the Risograph bridges the gap between a standard photocopier (which is cheaper up to about 50 copies) and using a commercial printer (cheaper over about 10,000 copies).

Risographs have typically had interchangeable colour inks and drums allowing for printing in different colours or using spot colour in one print job. The Riso MZ series models have two ink drums, thereby allowing two colours to be printed in one pass.

On learning what process can be done on a risograph machine, we then had a go at printing are own piece through photocopying an image of piece of design. We firstly looked at doing a one toned print, in using a vibrant green, after that we next had a go at developing this further by applying another tone of red over the top from moving the piece left or right to create a three dimensional effect due to the colours used. I felt that the machine was easy to use and you could create a various unique works of art from simple manipulation of the printer.

One of the things that made the risograph unique is the colour of the inks in which are generally very vibrant and can be seen as looking like UV paint, this is something I had never known about before being inducted and the brightness of the colours is something that could work for various projects within my time at university and would be something that I would want to explore for possible zine or poster designs as the dramatic colours is something that would look effective against normal printed posters. The colours on the machine give the pieces a three dimensional effect from the layering of the prints which also looks effective, another positive of the printer is like with normal printers a various paper stock can be used so therefore you can test a wide variety of inks on different papers to see what might work best for a project and to see what might look good on textured, or translucent paper.

 Another effect I liked on the machine is when photocopying an image you can move the image in various different ways, to shift in various directions and also has the option of zooming in and out, which gives the person more freedom to test and explore various ideas and layouts. Which can make a piece more interesting is everything is not purely fixed to type of perimeter so you therefore have the option to go off the p age and shift stuff to the left or right with ease. 

Me and sean chose to use the risograph as a way of experimentation and see what. printing effects could possibly done, we chose a paper stock that we felt at this stage may we one we would use, and decided to apply 2 designs to the printer in just two colours as a way of experimentation