GR/FR Operator's Manual — Introduction
A guide for the obsolete.
My first risograph was “Franny,” an FR3950-α—I rescued this little one from the basement of a comic artist in south Seattle in 2020. At this point in her life she was 20 years old, and had already made somewhere around 4,000 stencils, and 300,000 copies—but probably had not printed anything in at least 4 years. It took about 3 months to get her running again (I had to replace a motor, a gear, both feed tires, stripper pad, pressure roller, exit belts, and pressure control system)—but after all that that, we were off to the races—it was printing time! She served me and a small coterie of other artists very well for many years. When I moved to Minneapolis last year, she got bundled up (with her sister machine, “Granny,” a GR3770) and made a long road trip over to BULK Space in Detroit.
And this last week a few weeks ago, we three were reunited! I was in town for the MdW (Midway) conference—a gathering of artists who lead community projects and spaces in the Midwest. I was representing both my own practice repairing equipment in printshop throughout the region, and with the Workshop for Independent Publishing (which also runs a pair of these older machines). In honor of getting to give these original two friends some tune-ups, I wanted to gather together some resources specifically for this era of risograph.
As far as duplicators go, they are 2–3 generations old now,1 and are quite different from today’s machines. They have their own quirks and oddities, but they are powerful and durable machines, and if taken care of, they’ll last a good long while yet.
This post is the introduction to a multi-part, slow-start guide to running these machines! I don’t know how many entries will be in these series yet, but I’m trying to follow my friends’ advice and break these long posts up into smaller pieces. When the guide is finished, I’m planning on packaging it up as a print manual for anyone running these old beasts. For now, when referencing off to these future posts I’m just going to grey out the text.
But first—a relevant interlude on obsolete equipment! I’ve mentioned it here and there, but I’ve been working with Aiden Bettine of Late Night Copies on developing a little treatise for artists who repair and maintain their own equipment, called Post-Obsolescence. It’s shaping up to be kind of a hefty book project, with some philosophy, some practical guidelines, case studies with a bunch of different artist practitioners and research on the history of maintenance infrastructure, planned obsolescence, and the right to repair movement.
We’ve been developing it through a dialogic process, doing independent research then coming together and talking about it—recording those conversations, then building and editing transcripts and extending them with other material. And we’re trying to do that formally/publicly too, by publishing little snippets of it and passing them around—as a sort of a dialog-through-print.2 The goal is to grow a book with these fragments—to spark conversation and broaden the field of what we can eventually collect into the book.
We brought the first of those printed objects to talk about at MdW—a book defining the term “post-obsolescence” paired with sections from the conversation so far! I’ll be traveling with a small stack to pass around, but if you want to scoop one yourself, they’re listed in the Light Night Copies webstore: Post-Obsolescence 01: Framework.
We’ll also be bringing the project with this booklet and some new additions for a talk at PRINT TIME AFTER TIME in Philadelphia, October 9–11! This is a weekend of programming and a book fair organized by our friends FORTUNE, Ulises, and the Icebox Project Space.
Basic Information
The GR series is a mid-90s risograph family, and a continuation of the design of the earlier RA machines. It is a ubiquitous model, long discontinued, but still in use globally by artists and small presses.
The FR series is an upgraded model but with mostly interchangeable drums (there are unique HD-Black drums which are the exception to this rule)—later FRs had built in controllers and offered 4-button print positioning (by way of a motor embedded in the paper feed tray). The FRs were not produced as widely as the GRs and are rarer to find now. After the creation of the FR line, an additional GR model 3770 was produced, which was the first riso to offer full 600 dpi printing.
BACKGROUND + EXPECTATIONS
I think of the GR as the Windows XP of the riso world: they’re dated, but were the stable flagship at the time—widely distributed and used in a lot of different contexts—and many legacy systems still use them today (i.e. we, the cheap artist class). People who know cars call them a Honda Civic hatchback: old, durable, powerhorses, much beloved, and still chugging along.
What does that mean for the owner/operator? Here’s some of the big ticket items:
They are easy to maintain because they are so simple, but they do need regular maintenance. Owning a GR is a hands-on experience, you will have a toolkit in your studio, and you’ll probably use it monthly or weekly.
Unfortunately all consumables for this era of machines have been discontinued—no new inks or stencils compatible with them are being produced. However, the community has come up with multiple methods for retrofitting them to use the contemporary consumables made for newer machines, which are readily available. One of the articles in this series is going to be all about the different ways of dealing with this issue—but first I have to do some testing and upload some resources.
Printing is way more analog—the digital controllers for these machines are very rare and limited, so mostly you’re scanning stuff on the glass bed. Even when you have all the extra peripherals and can print from a computer, the tones you’ll get out of these are pretty heavily shifted, so expect to: (A) need a good means of printing originals; and (B) doing some form of linearization if you’re trying to reproduce fine photo tones.3
The registration on them is a little more bouncy side-to-side than on newer machines. On a well tuned GR you can usually get the bounce down to 1 mm max between any two layers, but this requires tuning up the second paper feed. In file prep, expect to need a little more trapping for graphic reproduction, and some wider margins on books.
Plan to print a little more slowly (ideally at speed ①)—GR/FR era risos are old and creaky duplicators—they usually do much better when run slow.
These machines are durable, and infinitely repairable! They’re going on 35 years of operation for a reason—they are workhorses.
As far as maintenance, what this means is that while they do require regular tune-ups and care to keep them going, they are simple and robust enough that that maintenance can be done very quickly once you know what you are doing. While newer machines are more stable day-to-day, when something major goes wrong with them (which is an inevitability of operating a riso), even if it only happens a few times a year, you often need a specific plastic or rubber part on hand and that repair might take an hour or more. Worst case scenario, you total a drum, and are out a big chunk of money. Whereas on a GR, if something big goes wrong, generally the worst that happens is that it loses timing—which is quick to diagnose and can be corrected in 5–10 minutes with just a screwdriver. However this sort of malady is more common, so GRs are a bit more high-touch, they need TLC and a caring hand.
At the same time, new replacement parts are becoming more and more rare—we’re increasingly dependent on the remaining stock of a handful of overseas warehouses, 3rd party generic manufacturers, and pulling bits and bobs from parts machines. Yet, with a few exceptions (namely the TPH and circuit boards), many more of the parts can successfully be replaced with generics or off the shelf things. And every year we’re learning more and more how to produce our own parts.4
WHY USE A GR/FR?
I love these machines, so allow me to sing their praises.
A big factor in printing with a machine of this era is cost. Even a really well maintained GR probably should sell for less then $600, and many beaters are circling around for free. And drums, the most precious of risograph commodities, run $75–150. Compare this to a newer one-drum machine—the machine itself will cost over $1500 (if it’s a high-end model, double or triple or quadruple that), and additional drums will be $750 on the low end. And while the upfront cost of equipment isn’t a factor for everyone, GRs make risography accessible at an economic level that many more of us can afford.
For many presses, a GR or FR can also be an excellent starter or learning machine—something to cut your teeth on, build up your production and audience, until maybe something else makes more sense. Often, when that happens, the riso is passed along so that some other press or project can form around it. And for many of us, especially: writers, punks, small newspaper publishers, comix artists, propagandists, and the rest of the scrappy/grungy heathens on the edges of the small press movement—these are the perfect machines for our ongoing practices.
They are also excellent for experimentation. Because they are cheap and sturdy, there’s less risk of causing serious damage to them, so it’s pretty accessible to try new things or print on weird papers, knowing that you can fix anything that might go wrong.
GR/FR models have somewhat heftier mechanisms than the newer risographs—that paired with changes in the drum design mean that GRs can put out a little more ink than newer models—creating darker and richer colors. It’s still not the intensity of screenprinting, but it can make for very poppy prints.
There is something to be said for the hands-on nature of both printing and maintaining these machines. Having to plan for and compensate for the riso’s interpretations of your images makes you a pretty adept technical printer after a few projects. And keeping these machines running gives you a really good crash course in the repair and maintenance of other mechanical systems you’ll find within equipment all over your printshop.
From here on out the rest of this post gets really technical—so if you are not the operator of a GR or FR machine, please skip to the end, where there’s some more notes about what I’m working on and what I’ve been up to recently.
DOCUMENTATION
Much of the official documentation for GR/FR machines is available online:
User’s Guide — A short introduction to printing with the riso, outlining its primary features, settings, printing process, and some basic troubleshooting.5 These are standalone documents that were meant to hold all the basic information a standard user would need to know.
Technical Manual — For each working area of the machine, this will explain basic functioning, removal, and adjustment. It also includes extensive guidelines for troubleshooting, information about the circuitry, test modes, etc. (usually this is a huge, 300–500 page PDF). One service manual may cover many different models of machine, additionally, some manuals are differential manuals—they only include the sections that were updated from the main manual (in which case you need both).
If you get to the point of needing the technical manual though, please ask for help! And not just from me, from any of the other presses in your area or online! We are in community, so say hello!
Parts Manual — All riso parts are described with a unique 8 digit number, in the format 017-11649.6 These are provided in exploded-diagram parts manuals (though the parts manuals list an additional 3 digits at the end, which are probably a batch number). If you’re lucky, some more generic parts (like sensors, o-rings, bushings, fuses, or motors) may also include a description with the non-riso name or specifications of the part—but more often than not you need to figure these out from the parts themselves.
Additionally, there are ~150 Technical Bulletins—which each document some small update or change or recommended calibration/adjustment/etc. that came out after machines were released (they were meant to inform dealers and technicians of changes as they rolled out); and a few dozen Service Hotlines—for really urgent issues, like the discovery of a part that was assembled incorrectly in the factory, or a required software update. Plus, there are many smaller supplemental documents, some from RISO Kagaku and some from different distributors and technical branches, which outline things like common parts needing replacement, cross machine compatibility, troubleshooting, etc.7
COMMUNITY RESOURCES
When I ran these machines in a community space, I put together the following printing guide: [Archive] Risograph Printing Guide—it’s incomplete, and I’d probably update it if I were to rewrite it today, but it might give you a nice starting point for basic print procedures.
Finally, I am very slowly documenting common repairs on stencil.wiki, in the form of “tutorial” articles. These list out how long the repair will take, what tools and parts are needed, any symptoms that indicate this repair should be made, and then long step-by-step illustrated instructions showing you exactly what to do. But these take a long time to make—so I only have the most common ones up right now, and am adding another every few months. The GR series and FR series pages have (slowly growing) lists of these tutorials on them.
Most of what I’m writing in this series is going to be migrated onto the wiki with some rewrites and additions, I’m sure. That space is becoming the repository of community knowledge—so I’m shaking out my mind into it a little bit at a time.
For now, here’s links to some of the most relevant tutorials listed on there:
Simple Skills
Now that you have some groundwork on what to expect with these machines, and where to find resources for them, we’re going to go into the basic skillset you should have to operate them on a day to day basis (and some background that will be useful for maintenance).
PAPER FEED ADJUSTMENTS
As with all risos, a lot of the difficulty with them comes down to issues with paper feed—if you can get a clean feed, that will resolve a lot of your printing and registration problems too. The feed mechanism isn’t dissimilar to newer machines (except for the oldest of GRs)—but since it is so critical—I’m including it in here. I’m planning a general “paper feed” walkthrough at some point for all models—so I won’t go fully fully in depth of how it all works—just how you use it.
Start by resetting all the feed settings to their neutral positions. Only adjust the green plastic dials with a coin, or by hand! Forcing them, or using a hard tool like a screwdriver will shatter them.
Flip the green paper type lever to NORMAL, regardless of what the paper stock is (even for heavy weights).8
Turn the upper angle dial to point at small screw cut out and/or triangle engraved towards the top of the dial.
Turn the lower pressure dial to 9:00, pointing at the double circle.
Jog or fan your actual paper (to loosen it up), load it onto the feed tray, and adjust the side guides to center it.
Different paper stocks feed differently! We are adjusting the feed settings for the stock you’re going to be printing on. If you want to conserve paper, you can keep re-running the same 20 or so sheets of it (printing on one side and then the other) until you get the feed dialed in. You can also use this feed-tune-up-time to start dialing in print position and density (though the position won’t be stable until the feed is).
If you have square edge magnets (I like the red-handled 2″ ones, readily available from the Magnet Source manufacturer, and distributed at most hardware stores), use them on either side at the back of the stack. This reinforces the feed, and prevents up/down bounce in the print direction and excessive skew that might otherwise come from the paper fishtailing.
If your paper has some curl in it or is very soft/light, move the yellow wheels along the paper feed shaft to sit ½″ or so inside the edge of the paper—this will help keep it flat as it goes into the riso.
Switch the print speed to ① (it’s easiest to evaluate at slower speeds—and remember, these older machines like slower printing anyway).
Try to print a single sheet of paper using the 𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗣𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗧 button, and watch the feed tray! It’s everyone’s impulse to look at the exit tray first, to see how the print looks, but the thing you need to figure out first is the paper feed settings—so we gotta evaluate how it’s doing.
(IM)PERFECT PAPER FEED
When you’re looking for good paper feed, you’re primarily evaluating two things: (1) how the top sheet fed in, and (2) what’s happening with the next few sheets on the stack.
The top sheet should feed in nice and smooth, pausing for a split second partway through, before being pulled into the drum fully.
The next 1–5 sheets (but not more) should move in just a little ways, less than 1 cm—this is them getting primed to be fed next.
In a perfect paper feed, only one next sheet will start to feed, and only the tiniest amount, maybe 1–2 mm.
If your feed doesn’t go as described, you need to identify in what direction things are off.
If the paper gets stuck because a big chunk of sheets fed in at once, or more than 5 of the next sheets start pulling in, or the next few sheets go in more than 1 cm, then the paper feed is multi-feeding (or getting ready to)—either the feeding action is too strong (adjusted with the green paper type lever), or the stripping action (which prevents the next sheets from coming in) is too weak (adjusted with the green dials).
If the top sheet doesn’t make it all the way in, or staggers in a little bit at a time, the paper feed is slipping (riso terminology—this refers to the feed tires slipping against the paper, but not feeding it)—either the feeding action is too weak, or the stripping action is too strong.
If the next sheet doesn’t move in at all, the feed is also probably not strong enough (or the stripping force is too strong)—and a future sheet may slip.
Now it’s adjustment time based on what we’ve observed—we’re going to adjust things in the following order: (1) stripper angle (upper green dial), (2) stripper pressure (lower green dial), (3) paper type lever. You can think of the angle as a fine adjustment, the pressure as a coarse adjustment, and the paper type as a totally different strength of paper feed.
Lower the elevator a bit (or fully if you need to get to the lower dial).
Pull the paper stack out a little bit and knock it back in place to square it up (the top sheet(s) will often be stuck in the feed slightly).
Only adjust one of the three things described below. It’s important to work your way into the correct settings by limiting your variables—if you just go changing everything all at once you’re going to be playing a chaotic game of chase to find a sweet spot.
First make adjustments to the stripper angle (upper green dial).
If the paper is multi-feeding , turn the angle clockwise by 1–2 hours on the clock and try to print again
If the paper is slipping , turn the angle counterclockwise by 1–2 hours on the clock and try to print again.
If you cannot go further in the specified direction because you have maxed out the range on the angle dial, move onto adjusting the stripper pressure instead. Do not turn it past the engraved range around the dial (it cannot be turned full circle, it can turn one way and then back the other way).
If the angle adjustments are not enough, reset the stripper angle dial to its neutral position and turn the pressure dial one notch as specified below—then any subsequent adjustments will be made on the stripper angle again (if/until you max out that dial once more).
If the paper is multi-feeding , turn the pressure up one (i.e. from the double circle at 9:00 to the large circle at 12:00) and try to print again.
If the paper is slipping , turn the pressure down one (i.e. from the double circle at 9:00 to the medium circle at 6:00, or from the medium circle at 6:00 to the small one at 3:00) and try to print again.
If you have made it to the lowest pressure (small circle at 3:00), and the lowest angle, and the paper is still not making it in, continue to the paper type lever.
As a last resort, if the paper is still slipping , flip the paper feed type to CARD, and turn both dials back to their neutral position. On the flip side, if the paper is still multi-feeding , you’ll probably need to recalibrate or repair some things in the feed to weaken it, but as a quick hack you can leave the dials where they are (max pressure and high angle), and just drag your thumb on the back of the stack to provide a little extra resistance.
When you feel like you’ve got good feed, run 3–5 copies, and watch the back of the paper feed stack, to confirm that the feed is still looking correct. Then it’s off to the races!
Paper feed is dependent on so many factors—the paper itself, the quality of the paper feed components, the paper, the ink on the paper, the humidity, etc. etc. The only constant is change—so get good at making those changes!
I’ll also say that a lot of these older machines have a very particular paper feed—they’ll only feed a paper stock if all the adjustable bits are set exactly right. And that’s not the most helpful, and they can do better! Generally this is just because the paper feed has not had the regular maintenance it needs to work reliably through the years. So I highly recommend doing some initial maintenance on the paper feed. I’ll get more into this in a future post in this series, but here’s a preview of the to-do list (going from light-touch to full-refurbish).
# FIRST PAPER FEED MAINTENANCE (GR/FR) 1 REPLACE THE FEED TIRES AND STRIPPER PAD 2 ADJUST THE ELEVATOR STOP HEIGHT (HIGHER:STRONGER, LOWER:WEAKER) 3 ADJUST THE P-DISC (GAP:CLUTCH ACTIVE) 4 CLEAN + LUBRICATE ALL BEARING SURFACES 5 REPLACE THE FEED TIRE CORES (OIL THE NEW ONES) 6 REPLACE FEED TRAY RUBBER PAD (IF DRY/WORN) 7 CHECK STRIPPER UNIT FOR EXCESS BACKLASH 8 POLISH THE BEARING SURFACES 9 SHIM FEED TRAY TO ANGLE UP AT THE BACK 10 CLEAN THE CLUTCH PLATES 11 REPLACE THE CLUTCH
MANUAL REHOMING
Due to a design quirk of this era of risograph, a very common issue you’ll run into is a scenario where you’ll have removed a drum from the machine, but the next drum won’t go in—you can’t lower the handle to lock it in place. This is because the riso is not in home position. Inside the riso, the drum is making a full rotation for each sheet that is printed (and another few cycles whenever a stencil is made), each rotation is a “cycle,” and home position is the starting point of that cycle. It’s also the position at which drums are mean to be inserted and removed from the machine.
To check if the riso is in home position with no drum in place, you can look at the black metal spindle dead center at the back of the chamber the drum slides into—it’s a small peg with a little wedge going through it. In home position, the thin part of the wedge should point straight up—if it’s off by even 1–2° then the machine is not in home position, and the next drum won’t be able to go back in.
The machine can be manually reset to home position (with the spindle vertical, indicated above), using the drum free rotate button.
DRUM FREE ROTATE
When the front door is closed (or the riso believes it to be closed) the green light-up button which is normally used to remove drums will change behavior and become a “free rotate” button. While this button is held, the main drive (and spindle) will rotate at half the slowest printing speed, and when it is released, the drive will stop. This can be used to rotate the riso to any arbitrary position (or to watch the paper feed, which is tied into this system).
The way that the riso knows if the door is open or closed is by checking for a closed circuit across the magnetic latch below that green light-up button. The steel plate on the inside of the door completes a circuit across the magnet triggering the door sensor—so to fake it, you just need to snap something conductive across the magnet.
But be careful! The reason the front door sensor exists is as a safety mechanism! When you trick it like this, you can power up all the moving bits of the riso with full access to them. So use caution, no hands / hair / clothing near the mechanisms while powering them!
To reset the riso to home position with no drum in:
Fake the front door sensor by clicking something steel onto the latch magnet.
You can remove and use the metal plate from the door itself for this (2 screws), but I recommend using the thin metal cable cover from the back of the scanner head, or a small steel ruler or wrench or something (the plastic holes in the door will wear out with repeated removal and installation of the plate).
I call that little plate from the back the key—it can be stored perfectly in a little slot under the magnet.
Press and hold the green light-up button, until the spindle in the back of the drum cavity is perfectly vertical (thin gap at 12:00, wide gap at 6:00—indicated above). It can be helpful to tap the button as you approach this point, to turn the drive in only very small increments.
If the riso gives a 𝚃𝟷 error during this operation, just hit the 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗧 button to clear it and continue (manually rotating for a while with no drum in will confuse the riso, because it thinks that with that much rotation it must should have seen the drum’s home position by now).
If you need to manually re-home your machine a lot, it probably indicates that either your drums’ home positions, machine timing, or the multi-feed switch need recalibration—but we’ll talk more about that another time.
HARD RESET
These models were starting to get smarter and more computerized, so they actually have a limited amount of memory which can be retained while they are dealing with errors, and can then try to “resume” the operation once the error has been cleared. But this error memory can also be problematic, because often you’ll fix an issue but be unable to clear the error message.
Normally pressing the 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗧 button is enough to clear an error, but some errors will persist even turning the riso off and on again. To clear this internal error memory, press and hold 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗧 while turning the riso on. This will also give it a hard reset if it gets programmatically locked up somehow (behaving strangely).
If the error message comes up even after this however, it means the riso actually does have this error (or at least tested it again and detected it), and you haven’t successfully fixed it yet!
MANUAL DRUM ROTATION + STENCIL REMOVAL
One of the first operations that tends to fail on these machines is the riso’s ability to remove stencils. This can look like torn stencils, errors when making new stencils, or just a stencil remaining on the drum. A good procedure to have in your back pocket is how to quickly remove a stencil by hand.
Pull the drum out of the riso normally, but leave it sitting in the rails.
Flip open the clamp plate by hand to fish out the lead edge of the stencil. With the stencil free, close the clamp plate again.
Don’t forget to close the clamp plate.
Look behind the front face of the drum—at around 7:00 (from the front), there’s a little metal tab sticking out at an angle beneath the ring of the drum body. That’s the rotational lock for the drum.
Press and hold the rotational lock with your left hand, and grip the stencil with your right hand. Then, while keeping the lever held in, pull the stencil straight up—this will roll the drum counterclockwise as the stencil peels off of it.
Toss the stencil, then rotate the drum back to home position (again holding the lever), with the clamp at 12:00—release the lever and wiggle the drum a little bit until you feel it click into home position.
(If you get really good at this, you can pull the stencil off in one fluid motion with just the right amount of force to spin the drum right back to home position, releasing the lever just before it gets there, so it clicks back in on its own.)
MANUAL DRUM REMOVAL
When the drum is put into the machine and the handle is lowered to lock it in, there is actually a second mechanically lock hidden under the drum that latches it into position. When you go to remove the drum, if you listen closely you’ll a hear a mechanical *click* when the drum removal button lights up solid—that’s the riso activating a magnet to release that latch. But what that mean is that the riso needs to have power in order to release the latch! And that the drum is safe to rotate. Which is not helpful if you have the riso on a stair landing and realize you forgot to take the drum out when moving it, or if you’re doing some kind of maintenance and really don’t want the drum to rotate at the moment.
Thankfully, there’s an easy mechanical override. Beneath the drum, you’ll see a metal plate with a small vertical slot cut out of it, dead center. If you shine a light into that, you’ll see the front surface of a small tab sticking up just within the slot. Use a screwdriver or pencil or something to push that tab to the right, and while holding it there, pull the drum out as normally (handle horizontal, etc.).
Some additional notes:
Go slow—and do not force the drum out. If you’re manually removing it because something went wrong, it’s possible that the drum is physically stuck on something inside the riso—and you really don’t want to break whatever that something is. Drum extraction is a topic for another time.
If the drum makes it almost all the way out but then gets knocked right at the end, it’s probably because the drum is not in home position (the clamp is not at 12:00). At this point it should be nicely detached from the actual drive of the riso, and it’s safe to use the manual drum rotation trick listed above to turn it to home position, and then pull it all the way out. (At this point you’ll need to manually rehome the riso.)
With the drum out, you’ll notice the rails don’t go fully into the riso—there’s a second latch blocking them—but this is just a little lever at the front of the rails that you can push down with your thumb. Once the rails are clicked in though, you’ll have to do the manual unlock process to pull them out again!
PREVENTING STENCIL WRINKLES
One of the common issues you’ll run into with image quality is stencils getting wrinkled on the drum (which results in a little lightning bolt of white striations in the printed image)—I’d say I’ve seen this in maybe ⅓ of all machines of this era. It’s due (mostly) to a loss of tension in the master roll—and it gets worse the emptier the roll is (the weight of the stencils helps tension them). There’s a couple of different hacks people have developed to combat it—more on those later.
For now, a good quick fix is to drag your hand on the underside of the master roll while the riso is scanning/burning a new stencil. This provides just a little extra tension and tends to prevent wrinkles. I tell people that the amount of force you’re aiming for is a firm pet of a cat. You’ll want to keep that light pressure on with your fingertips during the whole burning process—until the first printed sheet shoots out of the riso.
REMOVING JAMMED STENCILS
The master removal process on these machines is actually pretty reliable! The most common failures are either a damaged clamp on the drum (if enough of the little plastic tabs under the clamp plate are broken, the stencil won’t lift up properly) or total failure of the master removal motor (in which case it’s gotta be replaced). However, when you do have the experience of a stencil getting crunched up in the disposal unit, you’ll want to go about properly removing it instead of just trying to wrench it out.
After removing the disposal box, and lifting up the scanner table, the upper disposal roller can be fully removed (unpinching that jammed stencil). Find the two bright yellow levers—flip each of them up and rotate them 90° to unlock the bracket they’re attached to—then lift it straight up. Now it should be easy to pull the stencil out! When reassembling make sure that the bracket is facing the correct direction (it is possible to fully flip it around)—you want the folded metal lip of it to marry with the folded metal lip just next to it. Press down on the bar (while keeping the levers vertical)—you’ll feel that the whole thing is on springs and can be pushed in a bit—then rotate each lever to face towards the other one, and click each one down (you’ll feel the bracket lock in at this point).
USER SETTINGS
There are a number of basic user settings that can be made set the riso, to change things like the language, default speed, idling period, etc. These are all documented in the “Customizing the Initial Settings” chapter in the user manual and in an appendix at the end of the technical manual.
For the GR, to enter user settings hold the ✱ key, then press ➑ while holding it. Each setting can be selected by typing its two-digit code into the num-pad, then the value for it can be toggled with the 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 button. After making a change, a new setting can be selected with the num-pad, or the settings can be saved by holding the 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗧 button for 1 second.
For example, to change the default print speed from 3 (100 ppm) to 1 (60 ppm) you’d type the following: ✱ (hold) + ➑, then ⓿➊ → 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 → 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 → 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 → 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗧.
For the FR, to enter user settings press the 𝗖𝗨𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗠 𝗦𝗘𝗧𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 button, then scroll through settings with the ➕ and ✖ keys, and use the 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 button to toggle the value. After changing a setting, another one can be navigated to, or the settings can be saved by holding the 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗧 button for 1 second.
For example, to change the default image processing mode from LINE to DUO you’d type the following: 𝗖𝗨𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗠 𝗦𝗘𝗧𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 → ➕ → ➕ → ➕ → ➕ → ➕ → ➕ → ➕ → 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 → 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗧.
I’ll list out starting settings I recommend in a future post in this series.
TEST MODE
Do not use test mode unless you know what you are doing—test modes are all documented in an appendix at the end of the technical manual.
To enter test mode on one of these machines, turn it on while holding down the 𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘╱𝗣𝗛𝗢𝗧𝗢 and 𝗠╱𝗣 (stencil vs. print) buttons (in the top right corner of the control panel). When the screen displays “TEST MODE,” you can release the buttons.
Test mode has over one hundred different actions and settings hidden within it, each is accessed by punching a code into the num-pad and hitting 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧. The test can be ended by hitting 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗣 (some tests end automatically). To exit test mode, turn the riso off and on again normally, or hold the 𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗧 button (if any settings were changed, be sure to turn the riso fully off and on again so they are saved).
Tests can be broken up into 4 different types:
Sensor tests will provide an audio signal indicating if the sensor in question is detecting (fast beeps) or not detecting (slow beeps) (most sensors in the riso are binary on/off sensors). There are ~60 sensors in the riso, most of which can be tested in this way.
To learn how to interpret these tests, from test mode punch in ➌➌ and hit 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧—this is the test for the sensor that detects if the master disposal box is in position. You’ll hear fast beeps to begin with (on, disposal box detected)—then pull the disposal box out, and they’ll switch to slow beeps (off, disposal box removed). Hit 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗣 to end the test and stop the beeps.
Motor tests power a motor (or other electrically powered component) while the test is running and stop it once the test is stopped. There are 20+ motors, fans, solenoids, and clutches in the riso, each with their own test mode.
From test mode type ➏➒ and hit 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧—this is the test mode for the suction fan (under the exit belts at the end of the machine), which you’ll hear turn on. Then hit 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗣 to turn it off again.
Unit tests or sequential operation tests perform some kind of more-complex operation, either running continuously in a cycle or stopping when the operation is complete.
On machines with a flatbed scanner, open the scanner, type ➊⓿➑ in test mode and hit 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧. This is the scanner movement test, and you should see the scanner head slowly moving back and forth. This is continuous cycle, and will run until you hit 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗣.
Memory switches are the adjustable settings. When one is selected you can use the left and right print position arrows to change its value, and 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 again to set it, before hitting 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗣 to get out of the test mode.
COMMON GR/FR TEST MODES
101 Drum inking action—rotates the drum while pumping ink until the internal reservoir is full, then makes a blank stencil, wraps it around the drum, and spins the drum at printing speed (with the pressure roller up) 30 rotations.
This is used to force ink back into the mesh of the drum, sometimes used when changing a color or loading a new ink.
It can also be a lazy/quick way to help revive dry drums. Run this test mode with the front door open, and use your thumb or something to apply light pressure to the plunger in the back of the ink tube (only push on the little cone in the middle of the plunger—with about as much force as it takes to crush a grape) until you hear the stencil making process begin.
ILLUSTRATION OF HOW TO RE-INK A DRUM IN THIS METHOD?
119 Test pattern #3—creates a stencil with a grid of crossed lines from the riso’s internal memory, cropped to whatever paper is currently in the tray. This is used when calibrating print position, skew, and to check registration.
120 Test pattern #4—creates a stencil with a checkerboard of squares from the riso’s internal memory, cropped to whatever paper is currently in the tray. This is often used when doing a forced color transition on a drum—it’s a very high coverage pattern that will print out a lot of ink quickly. It can also be used to check the master-making image quality while bypassing the scanning process.
37 Ink sensor—the needle which detects ink in the reservoir inside the drum (if it isn’t touching the surface of the ink, the riso will try to pump ink the next time the drum rotates).
38 Overflow sensor—the shorter needle which detects ink in the reservoir inside the drum is too high (in which case the riso will throw error 𝙴𝟺).
62 Variable speed drum rotation—if you need to spin the riso at printing speed (not the slow rotate that you get with the drum free rotate button), you can use this test mode to run the main drive at whatever speed is selected on the control panel. Be cautious though! All hands / hair / clothing away from the main mechanisms while rotating the main drive! This is for observation only.
MOVING THE RISOGRAPH
Moving these machines is not fun! But here’s how to do it properly:
Remove the drum from the riso (manually unlock it if needed).
Remove the paper ejection tray by holding it at a 45° angle and lifting it up and out (if the hinge pins are locked in, remove the plates that go over them with 1 screw each).
Remove the master disposal box to carry separately (these plastic boxes are one of the most breakable bits) and tape a piece of cardboard over the opening so no one tries to grab the riso from there.
Tape shut the paper feed tray, front door, scanner glass cover, TPH cover, and master roll cover. Tape over the green handle that lifts up the top of the riso so no one grabs it by accident. Additionally tape fully over the top of the riso so that the scanner table doesn’t bounce open in transit.
Lift the riso with two people, one standing in front of it and one behind it—feel underneath the riso in the corners for little plastic cupped handles that dip up into the body of the riso. These are the lift points! Don’t lift it from anywhere else.
Note that the back of the riso will be heavier than the front (the back is where the main motor and other solid steel gears and such live).
If you need to reduce the weight of the riso, and are comfortable with disassembly, there are a few units that can be easily removed (and a few more that are more difficult). Following the instructions in the technical manual, start by removing the “Master Removal Unit” and “Suction Unit.” If that’s not enough, the “Scanner Table” can be removed—but that’s not documented in the manual, so ask for help if you get that far!
If you are not moving it yourself (you are hiring movers)—I highly recommend you tape cardboard over the whole feed tray area too, to discourage people from picking it up from here.
Don’t store the riso in a truck on its base unless you have it belted down nice and snug (you’ll probably want some cardboard to distribute the force of the straps for this, as the riso itself is essentially floating in a hollow plastic shell—there aren’t good tie down points)—you don’t want it rolling around.
Only transport drums in drum cases. If you don’t have drum cases, play the farmer + fox/chicken/corn riddle with empty cases, shuffling them back to ferry more drums.
SECRET BUTTONS
One of the artists who teaches the intro riso course at WIP describes the risos as having “secret buttons”—rarely used bits and bobs that have specific and sometimes hidden functions. We’ve gone over some of these already (the rotational unlock lever on the drum, the free rotate button)—here’s two more to end this intro with:
For machines with a scanner bed—if you lift that up, you’ll find one extra green button at the back, next the the master-making unit. This is the “master feed button”—if you press it, it’ll feed the stencil forward a little bit, then cut off the extra end of it (which you then reach in and remove) This can be really useful for getting a fresh square edge if something went wrong, and you had to manually cut or tear the stencil.
Most people know that the 𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗣𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗧 button can be used to make a single proof copy (it’s meant to be used when you need to test something without losing the remaining copy count)—but most people don’t know that if you press and hold that button, the riso will print until you release it! This is a great way to print only as many copies as it takes to fully ink a stencil on the drum.
And that’s it for the introduction! I suspect that future installments will go into:9
Initial setup—what to do when you have a GR/FR in your hands for the first time in order to get it going again, and tuned for art printing.
Obsolete consumables—there’s a bunch of different ways of dealing with the fact the RISO Kagaku isn’t producing ink or stencils for the GR/FR line anymore—so I want to do a survey of the approaches with some pros + cons and resources.
Mechanical overview—in particular some oddities about how these are machines are designed, and what effect that has on how they tend to get confused.
Common troubleshooting—a bunch of the basic repairs that you’ll probably need to perform in the life of your machine (though for a lot of these I’ll likely build them in the wiki first and just reference them in these posts).
Drum work—the drums are little machines in their own right, and they have their own slew of issues—so this will get into what working on GR drums looks like.
These also aren’t going to be sequential (and maybe I should spin them off into a different publication? I think there’s a way of doing that?)—I’ve got lots of less technical posts in the hopper that these might be sprinkled between.
Thanks for following along!
Current Happenings
I’m gearing up for my voyages in the back half of 2026! If you are in these regions and want a visit—drop me a line!
(August 20–September 28) First up is a return to Europe for three fairs (though I’m only tabling the first): Flyleaf in Berlin, Indiecon in Hamburg, and Dear Books in Amsterdam. I hope to get back to Knust as well to do some repairs—but also visit presses that I didn’t have a chance to last time. I’ll be getting back stateside just in time for the NYABF (as an attendee), where I’ll also be working with Pioneer Works to process a closet full of GRs and drums.
(October 8–November 2) Then I’m on a road trip to Philly for PRINT TIME AFTER TIME (and talking about Post-Obsolescence). Then continuing on to New York for a short spell, before tabling at the Cleveland Art Book Fair and Pittsburgh Art Book Fair.
(December 10–January 5) Finally, at the close of the year, I’ll head south, through Houston and Austin, continuing to CDMX, and finally ending in Buenos Aires (hopefully) to do work on many of the GRs and FRs in use by artists in the city.
At the Workshop for Independent Publishing we’re starting up a high touch support program for project work—as part of an effort to facilitate more multi-page objects in the space! That’s resulting in some resources and policies development, which will maybe make their way onto this blog at some point? At any rate, it’s exciting to play teacher/mentor again for artist friends!
I think my next post (maybe) is going to be a little essay about my experience working as a sort of modern desk job educated design type, and transitioning into basically a glorified mechanic—but working in the same sorts of spaces and communities in both roles. So expect something along those lines?
With the release of the first part of Post-Obsolescence, I’m officially back in full printing and publishing mode—and I’m (finally) going to do long runs of many of my publications, and just have them in stock? I have a few bookstores that want to carry them, and I need to put more of them online too—so probably I’ll post a little catalogue of the things that get the reprint treatment on here in the next month or so.
I really like when friends end their posts with a list of things they are reading. But I am at almost 10,000 words on this, and tired—so I’m going to try and start that pattern with the next one!
I don’t know enough about the history of RISO Kagaku to accurately speak to which generation they are specifically, but from what documentation I can find, I’d call them 3rd generation digital risographs. Here’s how I think the breakdown works: (1) AP (duplicator) + FX (stencil maker); (2) 007 (integrated machine); (3) RC + RA + GR/FR; (4) CR/TR (and all tabletop machines); (5) RP/RN + V8000; (6) RZ+ and MZ+ (all contemporary machines). I base this on what I’ve been able to glean of the internal mechanisms and how they align between machines. But since I have never seen the first two generations, and only a few RCs or tabletop machines, it’s somewhat difficult to tell exactly
This is a poetic little extension of one of the traits of proactive practice that came from the research of Jackie Hensy and Tristan Walker, back in 2019–2020, one of my first independent publishing projects. They analyzed the work of a small cohort of architects who were working in alternative and self-directed means, and from this distilled five patterns of their practices.
Trait 5 — Test in reality
To measure and understand the effects of an intervention, it must first exist. Envision the built environment as a laboratory for experimentation, reflection, and refinement…. Work that serves the public is most impactful when it offers a framework for users to exert reciprocal influence, leading to adaptable places with unforeseen uses. It is critical to understand that a handful of small projects can have the same impact as a single large project. The success of an intervention needn’t lie solely with the physical object; success can also be the conversations and mindset shifts provoked. Test, analyze, repeat.
Linearization describes creating a process (usually some sort of compensation curve) to pre-apply to files which ensures that what comes out of the printer is optically as close to the original as possible. For more information, I recommend checking out Dot Gain (recommended by Brandon Bandy of Special Effects)—which is a very professional offset walkthrough, but really useful at demonstrating how physical properties of the printing process will change the appearance of the same “master” on the paper—and why linearization is something you need to compensate for in the first place—plus the basics of how you figure out the shift (you can skip to 9:37 if you just want the compensation part). Then to actually run the compensation process, you can use Travis Shaffer’s linearity tool as part of the new [color/shift] package of separations software! You won’t probably have a densitometer or a colorimeter, but you can do a pretty good just comparing values by eye.
Once someone in the community has a small parts lathe practice and can create new timing rollers, we should be able to get their registration on par with today’s SFs.
This was frequently a physical binder that came with the machine (I’ve seen some with the official RISO Kagaku branding)—in fact there’s a slot for it inside the front door of the riso—but note that the spine is meant to go to the right. I’ve only seen English, Spanish, and German versions, but presumably this was to accommodate right-to-left reading Japanese?
This is the part number for the elevator gear, the first piece I replaced on Franny.
If you want a set, just message me—I’ve been collecting them.
A whole bunch of things change all at once when you flip the lever—plus the feed of these older machines is generally stronger than newer ones—so I find it best to start on NORMAL and only flip to CARD if its absolutely necessary. This advice specifically does not apply to any machines manufactured in the last 5–10 years; in newer machines it’s pretty safe to just flip the lever based on what kind of paper is being fed (unless it’s really humid).
Less of a suspicion and more of a certainty, because I already wrote a bunch of the following articles while drafting this one, but cut them out of here so it wouldn’t be too unwieldy.
Appreciate you and this convo! Just posted about it in a ceramics thread because the thread around equipment preservation and care runs through all creative modalities.
Currently running an RP, the first part of this rings true for that as well. Works great for me and the other local punks and hood rats who are down to tinker