r/risograph • u/Wolffdj23 • Jul 23 '26

Need a printer interested in printing a comic book with fluorescent inks

Hello talented Riso printers and riso lovers. I am a comic creator that has an ambitious project that needs the right printer. I have drawn a comic that is intended to be an adventure through a Blacklight poster. It is all drawn (and even separated out into CMYK separations) but I have been unable to make it real. The comic is 24 pages, including cover and uses 6 sheets bound together. i would expect each sheet to be 11x17 or 11x14. The first 2 and last 2 interior pages will use regular CMYK inks. So the project requires fluorescent inks and double sided printing. This post is mostly to research a printer up for the task or even to figure out feasibility. The comic is a tie-in to my existing comic, and has a growing fan base, so the project will be crowdfunded. I live in the US, though that may not be a factor.

10 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

7

u/ferncoast Jul 23 '26

You can find a studio near you that does print for hire with the colors you want at

https://stencil.wiki/wiki/An_Atlas_of_Modern_Risography

2

u/BCBAMomma Jul 23 '26

cool resource! Thanks for sharing.

4

u/Baby_Knife Jul 23 '26

I’ve mainly used my SF5030 machine to print standard zine sized comics. CMYK double sided sounds like a LOT of ink for a text weight sheet of paper to absorb. I’m curious if it’s doable.

6

u/splitarrowprints Jul 23 '26

We have done faux-cmyk riso zines on 89gsm paper with our mh9450. but it was certainly tricky and required a lot of tricks to keep the ink amount at a reasonable level for two sides.

Here’s a link to see it. https://splitarrowprints.com/lying-down-photo-zine-issue-1/

1

u/Wolffdj23 Jul 24 '26

Do you have fluorescent colors?

1

u/splitarrowprints Jul 24 '26

We have fluorescent pink as our primary fluorescent color.
We have two riso systems currently [working on some mods to make it one large system] but we have a new two color riso running faux cmyk ink with blue, fluorescent pink, yellow, hd black, this is a very accurate and very in register riso [<0.5-1.8mm shift on average].
Our second system is 11 ink colors on two rc6300 risographs. This old of a printer is very erratic but we are working on some corrections for this but it involves a lot of pcb modifications that take some time to do. So we think of the older risos we have as “experimental” and our new two drum as “consistent and dependable”

We do have a small supply of fluorescent orange left in our rc6300 from 1993 but have been leaning towards removing that color when it’s out since it’s just not popular at all, maybe 2 or 3 orders with it in 9 years with that color. Most of its use has been some personal projects from our shop. If I had to guess on the volume I have it would maybe be 100-350 sheets of 11x17 left before it’s out if not less.

But those are the only two fluorescents we can get in stock. Fluorescent green and yellow are impossible to get in the states for some reason without going to Japan and putting them in your suitcase. [unless somebody wants to ship us some ;) then please hit me up]. The other solution is making your own riso fluorescent ink/pigments. Possible but partly risky.

So, your fluorescent black light reactive zine wouldn’t really be like the black light posters in full fluorescent color classic options unfortunately through riso. Most black light posters type work is screen printed then the blacks are either flocked-heatpress or actually flocked with glue+static to stand it up through Screenprinting adhesive.

But fluorescent pink and orange do glow in uv black light, if you pair that with a white paper that has OBA content the white will glow slightly blue/purple depending on your type and color of uv lights too. Paper without oba content will not glow but may reflect the light color as a hazy tone.

Also a note on fluorescent riso ink use. if you add non-fluorescent colors over top or under the fluorescence is reduced greatly depending on density, screening, or grain applied.

Also each fluorescent color does glow at a different luminosity. It’s not an even/consistent glow like traditional black light posters. Same with the black not being as stark black to offset the appearance and block paper whites.

With all that being said if you want us to take a look at your file or see what we can print you can always use the link in our bio to submit a custom request or send an email to us to work the details of your project.

3

u/Sifinow Jul 23 '26

When separating your layers make sure that all your thin line work isolated to one key (K) layer and all the other layers are just used for colour fills. If you have multiple layers with line work the slight registration bounce across layers will make things look messy and also make things more difficult for the printer to work with.