The Lady Cartoonist

(Image not drawn by me, artist unknown)
For those that know the print Gocco, the story has been sad and perplexing. For those that don’t, you might wonder why we spend our time looking for obscure and expensive parts for a little printer that can only go as large as 4×6.
The print Gocco is a self contained screenprinter. I suggest checking out this video- while this post is not about the Gocco’s life..but it’s demise.
On and off for the last couple years we in the US have been hearing varying reports on the status on the print Gocco. First, there was bad news:
In December 2005, Gocco’s parent company, Riso Kagaku Corporation, announced it would end production of the Gocco system due to low sales in Japan. An Internet campaign was started to find a new home for the product.

Then, good news, Gocco users rejoice!
(from Wikipedia)
“As of June 2007, Riso Kagaku Corporation had resumed production of several lines of Print Gocco units and they were available in Japan and through limited import retail stores in the United States.”

Then, more bad news:

“On May 30, 2008, the Riso Kagaku Corporation announced that it will stop shipping Gocco printers in June 2008. They blamed the sharp decline in demand for their printers on the increase in use of home computers and printers. They will continue producing supplies for the printers until further notice.”

However, this was followed by even more bad news. Apparently all production of the Print Gocco’s flash-bulb one-use type lamps has ceased, therefore starting the Gocco’s death rattle in ernest. I found this information on several well-spoken but un-official sites, but it seems to be true as my local art store is plumb out of bulbs, as well as the bulbs being extremelly scarce on the ‘nets.
From NeHoc, Riso’s Australian importer, October 2008:
“There is now only one factory in Japan that lays dormant until Print Lamps are produced, then a few hundred people are employed (yep hundreds), to manufacture the batch, then the factory is closed again. The raw materials are now harder to get, more expensive and I feel the factory land is now more valuable than the product it produces.”
(link)

Well, shit- I don’t want to let me beloved Gocco go so easily into that good night. There has got to be a way to keep this thing alive or at least dead-alive. Such a beautifully simplistic, well-working, and crazy useful gizmo, damnit!

Doing a little research, I came across these items:

Gocco created a short lived bulb-less model called the MG-11 which used Xenon bulbs to burn the screens. I have never seen one for sale.

And a “Thermal Printer” that burns Gocco screen-like material rolls of Riso brand screen that comes in rolls. It is in fact the same cloth but with a permanent exposure technique- which takes 60 seconds versus instant.
The technical nerdy reason for this is that flash-bulbs, like the Gocco use, are built to release one super-hot super-bright burst, which kills the bulb. A reusable bulb, however, has to expose for longer to achieve the same effect. Using a Gocco bulb on the fabric meant for the thermal printer will over-expose (I’d like to try, anyways, but with 1 bulb instead of two).
The bummer is that the thermal printer runs about a thousand dollars and a few searches on Google turned up no cheaper models.
While the thermal printer is way to expensive, I’d be excited to see if there was a way to hack the Gocco to use xenon bulbs or some other re-usable flash bulbs, that would be nifty. Hopefully It’ll work, because of the proprietary and oddly mysterious methods that Gocco uses (sigh, okay, USED) means that we’ll never likely see a clone, which is a shame. I’ve been using Gocco for years to make my zine-and-comics covers.

There are a lot of folks like me, unwilling to let the Gocco go. Here are a few places and people trying new ways to give life to our little wonder:
Craftchi: making new gocco screens out of bulk thermal material and cereal boxes
The above uses rolls of thermal mesh screen, which can be found here and here.
The Gocco Flickr Group: extremely active in both the forums and the gallery; with threads on Gocco replacements, Units for sale, etc.