6th grade reading level | 2min
HI! Meet Frank the RC6300 Risograph printer!
‘Frank’ is a single color Risograph printer designed to live in offices and duplicate your classic office documents! Now he lives to print artwork & funky projects for creatives around the world!
Frank was officially discontinued by the Riso corporation in 2005. The final consumable parts went off market in 2024. Risograph printers have an expected life span of 10-15 years. Being 30+ years old is part luck and part hard work.
The team at Split Arrow has put countless hours rebuilding, rewiring, retuning, & 3D printing new parts to extend Franks lifespan. Beyond repair we have modified Frank to receive modern ink and modern components. The rebuilding and modification of Frank is how he earned his name. Named after Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Frank is 1 of 3 Risograph duplicators located at Split Arrow Print House in Atlanta, GA.
Frank the Risograph still functions like an old copy machine. We need to have a hard copy made to put inside the printer to make duplicates! This loosens up the control and gives the final print an old school look!
Brief History:
Coming from Japan to the US.
The RC6300 model Risograph came out in 1992 and was made for connectivity! The printer was meant to be able to talk to your desktop computer to make printing more accessible to the office. The RC6300 came with many accessories to make printing easy. We own some of these accessories! the official accessories we own are the computer interface & editing board. Along with an unofficial accessory to do thermography.
The RC6300 started out with 6 soy based ink color options:
Black | Brown | Red | Yellow | Green | Blue
Frank is now modified to accept soy and newer rice based inks and has 11 total colors with 13 color drums. [two drums are in non-printing condition]
Black | Burgundy | Red | Fluorescent Pink | Fluorescent Orange | Orange | Yellow | Green | Teal | Medium Blue | Purple
check out my limited edition printed swatch book
Split Arrow got Frank & Frank’s twin from a famous illustrator friend in 2016. They spent years repairing and getting Frank to production shape. Originally Split Arrow only used this printer for in house projects like order forms. It went back and forth for a long time to open this printer up to the public.
We believe Frank was in a copy shop before being sold and moved around due to his self service badge.
*One day we plan to rebuild Franks twin to a working order, for now it exists as a resource for donor parts.
What Does Frank Make?
Frank is set up to print only single color Risograph projects.
To cut the strain multi-color jobs can put on this 30+ year old printer, we chose to keep his use to only single color jobs.
• Frank excels at art prints, documents, forms, & note pads.
• Frank does not do great with picky people or picky projects. [nobody would be happy with the prints]
Frank is over 30, the printing is a bit loose. That’s part of the charm!
Avoid items that need specific folds, tight measurements, or projects that need die cutting or high accuracy objects.
This Risograph printer isn’t the most accurate. When it comes to printing items with fixed sizes or measurements, it can print untrue to the file. The image prints with a slight compression which can distort the image along the length of the print. Because of the compression this printer prints with precut paper only! Cutting the paper to the final size before printing.
*This means all prints that come from Frank will have a paper colored margin.
Printing stats:
• Maximum image size is 10.4869” x 16.2592”
• Maximum paper size is 12x17” [11x17” is the max size available for general orders]
• Max resolution of 400dpi
• Single Color Printing Only
• 11 Ink Colors
• Prints up to 120 sheets per minute
Franks Future:
Split Arrow does have a retirement plan for this Risograph printer in it's inevitable transition back away from consumer printing.
In the mean time, Frank will print one color projects. This is until our new two color Risograph printer can fully take over all customer printing. Frank will then be open for workshops & training. We think we will have another 5 years of printing with Frank before he quits working. He would be 38 years old!
Let's hope we can make it to 40 and throw a milestone birthday party!
