Risograph Color Conversion

Risograph Color Conversion
February 16, 2016 cemkocy

If you have been following our posts, you probably know that risographs can print one color at a time by using color drums. So for each color, you need a separate color drum and if you would like to get a new color, you may need to do a risograph color conversion.

Most of the Indie printmakers don’t have the budget to buy the newest Risograph machines, so they turn to second-hand risograph and color drum market, mostly on ebay and/or craigslist. Some of the second-hand models (let’s say most of them) are old and they are discontinued by Riso. This means that some color drums are not being manufactured anymore. So if you need a new color (and you are specific about your color) you need to be lucky to find your dream color on ebay. Your second option is to convert the color of one of your existing color drums. So let’s talk about risograph color conversion for color drums now.

Some experienced Risograph operators may prefer to mechanically open their color drum and do a gut cleaning before they switch to a new color. If you would like to see how they do this, stencil.wiki has an amazing how to clean your color drum tutorial, with pictures of each step. I preferred the other way, just putting a different colored ink tube, and print a sky-shot (using the glass top scanner). This may be costly because it may use more than half of an ink tube, and a couple reams of paper. So if you doing a risograph color conversion to metallic gold, you may want to do the gut-cleaning before putting in the special order / expensive metallic gold ink to the drum.

The fun part of this conversion is that with every print, you can see the change taking place, spreading out from 3-4 lines, and finally covering the whole sheet with the new color. In one weekend, we converted 3 color drums, from Purple to Teal, from Burgundy to Yellow, from Marine red to Fluorescent Pink.

Stay tuned to see new prints with our new colors: Yellow, Teal and Fluorescent Pink…

Below, you can see a gif from the Marine Red to Fluorescent Pink conversion. And the (almost) final result.

 

Risograph Color Conversion to Fluorescent PinkFluorescent Pink, Risograph Color Conversion

 

 

 

 

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