Risograph Mini-Resources

A small interlude of resources for printers.

The working table after doing drum repair at Binch Press—each little circle held a different type of screw (with additional parts spaced around). It was both functional way of organizing the work of the day, but also notes for future drum maintenance guides that I want to collaborate on with Jules Sharpe!

This is a very quick post—just to get some links out for people! I have drafts for two much more involved standard style research posts in the works, but I wanted to get these into the ether in case they are helpful.

In my time as a publisher and doctor to these little duplicators (and counselor to their humans) I’ve made (and found) a bunch of resources! Here are the maintenance ones:

1. First up, the reason for this post—Replacement Parts by Model.

   1. This is the more-or-less comprehensive list of parts I recommend folks have in their stock to keep their machines happy, with recommended quantities and links to where I would buy these parts (in the US—though most things are shipping from China).

   2. The primary things are sort of the mission critical bits (commonly needing replacement, or will-knock-out-the-riso-when-broken), and the optional ones are good to have, but hopefully you never need them. There's a bunch of rarer parts I carry around too, but I've left them off this list as mostly you don't need to worry about them.

   3. This was put together so that people can stock up as replacement parts get harder/more expensive to source.

2. A simplified Basic Risograph Maintenance Schedule.

   1. This is meant to be printed, trimmed, and z-folded, then pinned or hung up somewhere near the riso.

   2. The first page is the stuff to do daily (AKA how to be nice to the riso and yourself, and red flags to watch out for), the subsequent pages give things to be done every 2–4 weeks and every 6-months to a year (it’s aspirational, do your best!)

3. Some additional Best Practices for maintaining a risograph.

   1. These are my basic rules of thumb for all machines, plus an earlier version of the big routine maintenance stuff I do (never mind that part, it’s too complex, the maintenance schedule above is much more useful).

4. Next, the maintenance Toolkit that I recommend you keep on hand. I don’t have a nice link or printable version of this yet, so I’ll just embed it as a footnote.¹

5. If you want my help doing repairs, I’ve (finally) put up some info on my rates and policies for remote and in-person work: Maintenance Rates (Robert Baxter).

6. Lastly, I’m working on a big Risograph Maintenance Tutorial (in the style of old typewriter repair manuals, and Paul Moxon’s Vandercook repair guide)—I don’t share it out super openly, as it’s going to be a working document for the next few years, but hit me up if you want to check out the draft version and I’ll send you a link (printed drafts are sometimes available on risobookstore.com).

And here’s some more useful stuff around the internet:

7. My favorite site for general riso information is Exploriso (a web version of an amazing book)—lots of great stuff in here for history, process, and examples).

8. The standard hub for riso info is of course stencil.wiki (and I am so excited for the new version, but it doesn’t exist publicly yet—I’ll be doing a post on some of the work I’ve been doing with George Wietor to update it in a few months).

9. Anemone’s Spectrolite is the go to tool for low-fuss color separation, imposition, and overall riso pre-press, a load-bearing pillar of the community.

10. Travis Shaffer of the There There photo series is probably one of the most technically capable photo printers on riso—[color/shift] is a project he does that shares color profiles he makes in that process—this is one of the main resources I use when separating.

11. As far as community spaces go, the best public one right now is probably r/risograph (where I will occasionally provide maintenance support when people are struggling). There is also a private discord group, but it’s only for operators, not for sales, or distribution or anything like that (message me if you want to chat about an invite).

Next up some general printshop and informational resources and things (a bunch of raw spreadsheets—many with outdated information) in here, but perhaps they will be of use to you):

• I’ve shared my catalog of Printshops + Bookstores before, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s a little accounting of how many different community print spaces operate (including rates, programs, membership models, etc.).

• This Risograph Listing (from 2–3 years ago) is a little catalog of the presses I follow and the equipment they use. I made it in the first place to learn more about the standard papers people are using in the US (and ink colors)!

• And then, from earlier in this substack, my little series on (Systems from) Presses Kept Running (which has conclusions and patterns from observing how a lot of the different places I visit operate).

• Finally, here’s an old old resource I was working on when I was just getting started: Risograph Index—it was meant be sort of a finding aid, gathering links to many places on the web (forums, videos, etc.) that cover various topics about maintenance and printing. I only ever built out the first section of it (on where to find resources) which contains many of the above things. I’ve shifted these efforts to hosting stuff on the new wiki, once it exists!

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Current Happenings

1. Just got back from another big work trip (to Boston, Providence, NH, Minneaplis, and NYC)—now I have two weeks to pack up my library apartment, and then it’s the full nomad life for me. I’ll be bouncing between PDX and Seattle a little bit through the Seattle Art Book Fair (May 10–11), then it’s off to LA for LAABF (I’m not tabling, just hanging out and running some maintenance workshops in town). After that, visits to Richmond, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Paris, and Copenhagen through the summer and into the fall.

2. The next post (probably) is going to be about an old survey on how-you-got-started-in-artist-publishing that I am reviving for some future research. If you want to give it a whirl it’s here: Arts Publishing Survey (Ongoing)—be forewarned though, it’s very comprehensive (maybe overly so) and takes about 20 minutes to complete (I recommend being logged in so you don’t lose stuff).

1. TOOLS

• Phillips head screwdriver
  (specifically JIS Phillips #2)

• Flat head screwdriver

• Metric hex wrenches (1.5 mm–5 mm)

• Needle nose pliers

• Adjustable wrench (or hex wrenches)

• Small vice grips

• 5.5 mm socket wrench or nut driver

• Ruler (mm) and / or calipers

• Small flashlight (bonus if magnetic)

• Fine point sharpie

• A magnet or magnetic retrieval tool

• A nylon bristle brush (and maybe a brass bristle brush)

SPECIAL / EXTRA

• Metric feeler gauge (harder to find, but necessary for adjusting roller distance inside drums — should have .07 mm .08 mm .09 mm .10 mm leaves)

• 3 mm roll pin punch (useful for extracting + replacing broken elevator gears on RZ+ machines)

• Retaining ring removal tool (sort of like tiny round nose pliers — when going deep into the gears + such this is the only tool that will get there).

MATERIALS

• Rags (disposable shop rags are great), q-tips, make-up sponges, etc.

• Disposable gloves, or chemical resistant rubber gloves (for solvent + alcohol)

• Masking tape

• A stack of post-it notes

• Small zip ties

• A light oil (3-in-1 or sewing machine)

• A tube of white lithium grease (not the can / aerosol kind)

• Odorless mineral spirits (or other low strength solvent — for cleaning ink off of non-rubber things)

• A citrus solvent or dish soap (for cleaning ink off rubber things)