The RISO printer is for one-color-at-a-ime bulk printing. Because it creates a screen for each image and then disposes of it, it is not appropriate for printing one or two pages. Except for setting up, we require it to be used for a minimum of 50 prints per screen created. So if you are making a book or magazine we require it to be a minimum run of 50 copies. We also require that 2 copies of every end product be kept for us, one for our archives and one for the The Rotch Library of Architecture and Planning. The RISO printer is not appropriate for printing pages of text [see below] as it converts the text into dots (holes in the screen) so any text below 18 points is very compromised. Text is best printed on a laser printer which uses the vectors that text characters are made from, to draw a clear outline and fill that outline, making crisp clear text at all scales. See details below. We do have some standard office black and white laser printers for printing text but they do not fit thick or textured papers and only work on letter size pages.
Here is an example of 12 point text on the RISO printer compared to the same size on a laser printer. See more samples below (on letter size pages): the bigger the text the better is reads. Generally if there is no image on the page, RISO is probably not the appropriate printer, but where images and text is combined, and the text isn’t too small it may work.
It is also not appropriate for making photo quality color blends for a number of reasons (see sample of a RISO print corner placed on top of a color laser print).
- it has to print each color separately and, unless it is very finely tuned (very difficult) the subsequent colors will sit ON TOP of the earlier colors.
- it prints dots that are much bigger than the dots printed by laser printers
- we only have some colors and cannot generate a large range
Multi-color prints that try to blend colors can get very murky because the inks sit on top of each other and don’t blend or because a color is not possible to make with the colors we have.
If you work really hard at lining up your screens AND we have colors that can approximate your needs, you can get it to look somewhat photographic, but it will still look like a newspaper photo as the dots are visible to the eye. If you want closer to photographic you need to print on a laser printer, or for actually photographic images, an inkjet printer
So what is best for printing on the RISO printer???
The RISO printer is best for printing single color images or multi-color images that have little or no overlap or blending of colors… or blends of colors where you can take advantage of the one color sitting on top of another. This is a creative process, an experiment in the fundamentals of print, often a dirty, messy experience that can produce interesting and otherwise unattainable results… It can print on pages up to tabloid/ledger 11″x 17″, light cardstock thickness, textured and colored. See samples below: what happens when we put blue and red ink on yellow paper? or print red images on top of black images on white paper? Graphic images with blocks of color and simple blends work well too. What can you do with just Black, Yellow, Red and Blue?
