Printing Services
Colour Code offers Risograph Printing and Screenprinting for the production of books, posters, textiles and more. We print with a Risograph V8000, GR3770 and a 25″ x 38″ American Cameo Semi-Automatic Screenprinting press. See specs below and contact us to print your next project!
What is Risograph Printing?
Colours
Paper
Layout
Imperfections
Printing Photographs
Screenprinting
Custom Quote
What is Risograph Printing?
Risograph printing is similar to screenprinting, it uses the same principle of passing a liquid ink through a screen with a stencil. Images are thermally etched into a thin material called the master which is then mounted onto the screen of a print cylinder. The cylinder spins at a very high speed and creates prints as paper passes underneath. Different colour print cylinders are swapped into the Risograph and the paper can be run through several times to create multicolour prints.
At speeds up to 110 prints per minute Risograph printing is a fast and economical process ideal for small format print projects in editions of up to 1000. Using soy based inks in a range of colours, prints made by the Risograph have a vibrant and tactile quality that are unique to the process.
Colours
Risograph inks come in a range of interesting spot colours, they are semi transparent and can be overlayed in different opacities to create even more colours. We keep regular stock of the following Risograph inks:
Black
Hunter Green (P 567 U)
Purple (P 273 U)
Sky Blue (P 285 U)
Flat Gold (P 464 U)
Bright Red (P 185 U)
Fluorescent Pink
Bubblegum Pink (P 231 U)
Melon Orange (P 150 U)
Yellow (P Process Yellow U)
Light Grey (P Cool Grey 5 U)
Paper
Due to the nature of the Risograph’s soy-based ink, Risograph printing is only suitable for uncoated papers. We keep regular stock of vellum finish paper in text and cover weights. For large projects we can custom order paper to your specifications. The maximum sheet size is 11″ x 17″ and weight is 80 lb. cover or 205 gsm.
Layout
Like Screenprinting, preparing artwork for Risograph printing requires a separate stencil for each layer of colour to be printed. Simply prepare a bitmap or greyscale pdf at 600 dpi of each layer and you’re ready to print! For photographic colour separations or if you have any questions about layout contact us and we can help you through the process or we can do it for you at an affordable rate!
Imperfections
Registration
Risograph printer’s are built for high speed single colour printing, this means that they are prone to some shifting when printing multiple colours. You can compensate for this by adding trapping/overlap when composing your multi-colour design for print.
The Risograph uses a thin rubber roller to apply pressure between the paper and the print cylinder to create prints. This rubber roller isn’t perfect and eventually gets worn causing unevenness when printing solid areas of colour.
Printing large solid areas of colour can cause the paper feed tire to slip resulting in misfeeds when printing successive layers or printing on the reverse side of a press sheet. For images with heavy ink coverage we recommend a smaller image area (ie 10.7″ x 14″) to minimize misfeeding.
Risograph printer’s cannot print full bleed, the maximum sheet size is 11 x 17 and the max. print area is 10.5″ x 16.7″ However, we can trim to bleed.
Printing Photographs
Monotone
Simply reproducing your photograph in one of our 10 spot colours can yield some pretty interesting results-
By printing with 2 complimentary colours we can simulate a deceptively wide range of tones-
Full colour images are printed in CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. With Risograph printing we can replicate CMYK by substituting Sky Blue and Bright Red/Fluorescent Pink for Cyan and Magenta. Using these particular spot colours in a mock-CMYK process means it won’t be an exact reproduction, but the difference between the cyan/magenta and our blue/red/pink will result in really striking and vivid photographic prints!
Screenprinting
We screenprint with waterbased inks on paper and textiles. T Shirts, tote bags, large format posters, packaging and and just about any kind of paper product – if it’s a flat surface we can probably put a print on it! We’re interested in experimenting and welcome projects of any size/quantity.
Custom Quote
Send us the following information along with a preview of what you’d like to print and we can provide you with a custom quote for your project:
- Title
- Date of Delivery/Pickup
- Screenprinting/Risograph Printing
- Paper or Textile specs.
- # of Colours
- Quantity
- Dimensions
- Trimming, finishing, binding etc.
- PDF Preview of final/proposed artwork for print