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By this time, I’ve pretty much got to the point that I felt like I paid my Riso dues – got my chops, gave my pint of blood, traded my soul to Satan, however you like to characterize the process.  It is clear to me that this beast is like no other printing process I’ve ever worked with, and that includes offset, silkscreen, litho, etching, inkjet, laser…  It has a culture and mystique all its own, not to mention the look and feel of the prints and process. It even has its own Evil Villain – RisoSource, AKA David Interdonati.

I took some random files and started trying to figure out how to separate them into “plates”.  The Riso uses printed black-and-white sheets, placed on what looks like a copier platen, to make each screen (“master”), so if you want to print red, you make a black and white that makes the red master.  Here are a couple of things I messed with – a poster I’d printed on the Epson a while back:

,…and an exercise in photo treatments:

For example, here is the yellow art for the flatiron photo – black prints yellow:

I had a couple of pretty practical projects I wanted to get done, and was planning on just ordering them online, but the Riso changed that – business cards and a new brochure for the shop.  I talked to Jennifer Adler of Survival by Design and she was really excited about working with this thing, and we got to work.  She sent this over and I ran it up:

…a really cool mix of Riso printing and typography – not too far from letterpress.  In the process I remembered a technique I learned all of 30 years ago in the 4C stripping department at Eusey Press- how to lay out a “work and turn”. (By laying it out with both the front and the back on the sheet, backed up on the center line, you only have to make one plate instead of two, and when you turn the paper over, it backs up correctly…  )

With the tests and cards behind us, it was time to start on the big project, the brochure.  This was a simple tri-fold piece that we needed to update, and as Jennifer said, a makerspace should make their own brochure, right?

I’d learned a few things, beyond keeping this printer running happily.  The inks are very transparent – so when you lay down the yellow and put the red over it, you get a nice orange.  We’ve got yellow, black, green and red, so the colors are fairly basic.  Also, the ink takes a while to dry – it actually doesn’t dry, per se, it absorbs into the stock, and takes its time to do so.

That means a couple of things – you have to run a nice, uncoated paper like watercolor or a printmaking paper.  We went back and forth to the art store and tried a bunch of stock, and settled on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell Ultrawhite, 80C.  (This thing will take some nice card stock, in fact it like it better than a lightweight paper…). Using copier paper is a hit-or-miss, as it’s both coated, and very lightweight.  It also means that you have to give the thing some time between color runs or you’ll smear the ink, track it on the rollers and get it all over places inside the printer you don’t want it to be.

I also learned that it makes a slight difference in what order you lay the colors down.  If you print red over yellow, it will favor the red a bit, for example.  Generally, though, you want to lay the colors down by coverage – put down the lighter coverage colors first, then the heavier last, just because of the fact the paper gets soft as it gets wet with ink.  This creates all sorts of funny feed problems.

Probably the best advice to anyone going down the Riso road is in the first chapter of the Guide to Risography:

“RISO IN A NUTSHELL: 01. Take your time.”

Chapter 4: Designing and Printing the Brochure is up next!

 

Well, I don’t particularly go out of my way bashing people who are scammers on the interwebs, but in this case, I had to make an exception.  In my very brief time exploring Riso printing, I was pretty impressed by the community, and it turned out, this guy had a long history of raping that community.  (I’m also switching to first-person instead of “we”.  It started feeling like what my old friend Wendell used to say, “What do you mean ‘we’?  You got a mouse in your pocket?)

Anyway, back to the story.  We needed some more colors, and had a couple of projects to try out on the Riso – business cards, and a new brochure.  I immediately got on eBay and searched, learned that our printer uses a very specific and somewhat rare drum,  and found one in Kelly Green.  I’m not a fan of green, especially Kelly green, but it was a start.  They’re pricey – $600 each, and this one was not new or refurbished, it was sort of, pay the money and take the chances.  The seller was Risosource, llc, with 56 feedbacks, all good.  It was only later that I looked, and they weren’t seller feedback, they were buyer feedback – a pretty common way to build up good feedback without selling stuff.

I messaged the seller through eBay and told him I was on the lookout for more drums of different colors.  I then got a text message from him, saying he had two more drums for sale.  Now, for non-eBay users, this is a huge red flag – contacting a buyer outside of eBay.  On top of that, he got my phone number from posting a fake tracking number and it comes up on PayPal.  Then came the bullshit.

The shipping on the green drum was delayed and delayed.  I got several promises, no apology or explanation, and finally filed a claim with eBay for a refund since it didn’t appear he’d send the item.  He then shipped it.  When I received it, he’d claimed it was refurbished yet it didn’t work.  It hadn’t been programmed for the color (so there’s no way the thing was ever tested or even, for that matter, refurbished) and the ink tube was causing an error.

After a -very- long story, mostly like the above, I got the red drum and a drum that was black, and not loaded with ink.  I had paid him for a pink drum.  (The values of them are significantly different – black is very common, and pink is in high demand.). The red drum didn’t work – after taking it apart I found the encoder on the ink pump wasn’t attached – and the black drum, well, I took it apart to clean it and try switching it to yellow, and in the process found the ink guide tube was cracked and the pc board on the back of the ink receiver had come unattached.  Lord knows what that drum had been through for that to happen.

Funny thing though – see the yellow on that plate?  That would suggest this drum had originally been a yellow drum.

So I glue the tube back together, and re-attach the pc board, finish cleaning it and load it with yellow ink and give it a test.  There’s still some black coming through somewhere, but as I continue to use it it’s cleaning itself out pretty well.

So yeah, I’m out $1800 and got 3 drums that needed repair, but were claimed to be refurbished.  I got them working, and am now in business, and learning how to use the thing.  I’ve also learned a whole lot of other stuff – how to take a Riso drum apart, how they work, how to clean them and switch colors, error codes and service troubleshooting for a few.  I’ve also learned that Venmo has -zero- buyer protection and you should -only- use it for transactions with friends or at least people you know.  I learned that South Carolina has a Consumer Protection Dept with literally no power whatsoever, that the FBI Internet Fraud guys are remarkably easy to file a claim with, and above all, that you should research someone before trusting them – there are just dozens of complaints about this guy on the internet, and he’s not left a trail, but a highway of folks he’s cheated and scammed.

He goes by several names – Risosource, Risomonger, David Lindsey Interdonati, Jackson Risomonger, Only Great Copiers…  and there are threads on Facebook Riso groups, the Reddit Riso group, and even the Discord Riso group.  He’s a thief, pure and simple.

I feel like all this has given me a crash course in Risography, especially operation and repair.  That leads us to the next chapter – Chapter 3: Designing for the Riso.

Fairly recently, we got a Riso RZ220ui printer from the “Free Stuff” pages on Craigslist.  It’s been quite a journey.

What’s a Riso printer?  It’s the damnedest thing.  It prints using a screen, basically like a silkscreen process.  You print one color at a time, like silkscreen, but it looks like a copier.  Probably the best source of information about the process and how to use it is this very simple quick-start beginners guide: RISO Guide Partisan 2018

Riso is a cult phenomenon…  do a quick search for it and you’ll see some amazing print work.  It has a very characteristic look, and is very popular among ‘zine artists.  We first heard about it talking to our letterpress guy – suggesting we get one to appeal to that community and the art community in general.  So we kept our eye out for one.

Chapter 1: Free Stuff on Craigslist

In the first chapter of this saga, the ad said “lightly used, works great!”  We chatted with the owner and he said it hadn’t been used for a few years, but when it had, it worked perfectly.  Well, we got it back to the shop and immediately got an error code somewhere in the paper transport.  After looking inside, there were three rubber belts that were dangling, broken and dried out…  this thing definitely did not run the last time it was started up.

Some research and part-sourcing, and we found the steel-spring belts shown above.   They cost all of $12 with shipping from China, and it took about a half-hour to replace them.  It would take 15 minutes if we have to do it again…

Again, we fired it up, and got another error message.  Some searching gave us the error code list, and then we found this great video showing how to get to the sensor…  a bit of a job, but it seemed the fix.  When we sat down to do the work, it looked like we could just reach in and swab the sensor, with no disassembly.  …tried that, and it worked the charm, and we got the thing fired up and working, printing nice as you please with the black drum it came with.

So, already we’re on a bit of a rollercoaster ride with the Riso.  Joy at finding it, some hard work getting the 200lb package home, error messages on a weird technology “office machine”, (and we’re not much on office machine repair, not to mention), one victory in the repair department only to face another obstacle, and finally success.

But wait, there’s more.  See Chapter 2: Caveat Emptor, or how I met RisoSource…  coming up!

Well, you may have, by now, begun to suspect that when things are quiet on the news from The Brickyard, that maybe we might be just up to some…  well, shenanigans.  You wouldn’t be wrong.  We have a whole lot to report, but we’re going to start with a little update on our health and welfare, first, and then tell you the Big News.

We’ve seen a curious thing this past year.  With all the changes in our daily work habits and the trends in employment and life in general, we’re seeing a whole lot of people come out of the woodwork wanting to do “that thing” they’ve always wanted to do.  In a lot of our new members’ cases, that means joining a collaborative workspace and learning, trying, even playing with creating and building.  That means, in the last few months, not only have we recovered the membership that dropped off after you-know-what, but we just passed a goal we’ve been working at for a long time – 50 members!  Without getting too philosophical, this is another example of a crisis showing us who we really are, and what we can accomplish!

We’ve also been awarded a few really amazing and generous grants.  One is from the MassDevelopment Collaborative Workspace program for expanding our space…  more on that later.  The other grant is from the MGCC – the Mass Growth Capital Corporation – to help businesses in Lynn pivot out into the post-covid ecosystem.  …and that’s what we really want to tell you about!

The Big News

We’re excited to share that we’re working hand-in-hand with City Hall to explore free, broadband WIFI access to the entire downtown area.  It’s a great partnership – we’re leveraging our considerable skills in sourcing and evaluating systems, designing tech solutions, business and development to bring the city a bunch of potential options and solutions, and we have the resources to implement them and test them.  City Hall can then evaluate ideas to implement the best long-term plan for bringing broadband to the city.

HUGE thanks to the City of Lynn Planning, especially Lauren Drago and Aaron Clausen for their outreach and enthusiasm – not to mention Mayor Thomas McGee and his vision and support for our version of innovation in the city!

Right now we have two access points up, covering Central Square and the new Frederick Douglass Park, thanks to the support of Lynn Museum, GALA, Cultura Latina Dance Academy and the Union Cafe for their patience and willingness to let us use their sites.  For all the latest information, see our site: FreeLynn.com on the web, and on Facebook, FreeLynnWIFI.  These are using one wired access point, and one “meshed” point, which doubles our reach for a minimal investment.  With this mesh tech, we have drawn out a system that cuts the costs of our original city-wide design in half.

Try it out!  Just head over there and look for FreeLynnWIFI on your mobile device, and join the network.  No fees, no signup simple as that!

Do you have a business location in Central Square, Monroe Street, Union Street or Market Street and want to join the fun?  Shoot us a note, and we’ll make it happen.

OK, there’s more…  but we’re going to tease it out.  That’s it for now.  We’re working on a really fun project to buildout our space without the usual constraints of a buildout, but that’s all we’re going to dish for now…

As always, keep making stuff. Take care of people, play nice and clean up after yourselves.