CD thermal printers?

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:57 pm

Has anyone bought a cd printer. I was wondering if they only print in one color at a time and which ones are good. I'm talking about cheap labelers, like the Tascam P11 CD/DVD Thermal Printer.

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 4:06 am

Yes and you get what you pay for.....

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 6:16 am

There is info on CD printers in the archives, but it is a couple of years old. Is there anything new on the market? What are people using for demo disks or small batch production? What are you using for larger runs?

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 7:21 am

A lot of people are using the EPSON printers that print directly on the CD or DVD (you have to use the silver or white printable CDs or DVDs)

http://www.surething.com/ST/Category.asp?CatCode=APR04_EPSON or
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/epson_r800.html

We have a Signature Pro from Primera that we really like

http://www.lskstorage.com/signaturepro.html

TEAC has a new printer out and a fellow audio engineer LOVES it.

http://www.cdrecordingsoftware.com/INKJETPRINTER.html

Most on CD thermal printers are OK for lables in house or for demos but they don't look particularly GREAT when you want to make an impression.

There is however this new one http://www.peripheralstorage.com/cdduplicator/teac/teac_p55.htm that looks awsome but a bid pricey....

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 7:42 am

Hey thanks very much!

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 9:15 am

Epson is "da bomb" for standalone injet on-disc CD printers and printing. I used to have their 600 (and many others before that). Now we've got two R220s and one R320 (both discontinued now, of course and replaced by the R800 series) on a separate printer server and they still work great.

They each come with a CD tray to insert CDs for one at a time printing. They also include printing software, and it works very well. It's easy to use and tweak, and we keep everything on file for reorders, etc. It's not terribly fast, but for short runs - 5, 25, 50, etc., but it works and it looks great on printable CDr's.

You can probably still find the R220s or R320s online somewhere, if you shop around, but Epson has typically discontinued them officially. (They've moved on with Durabrite or some High Def printing inks or whatever...)

The printers are affordable in themselves, (usually on sale for about $100-120) but replacement inks are of course expensive if you buy them from Epson. I use Shop4Tech.com and they have great generic replacements. The more you buy, the cheaper they are.

DiscMakers sells their own version of Epson's latest printer (the R800?), with supplies, etc. along with bigger systems that do it all.

I get afforable heavy duty matte and glossy paper from Office Depot, (150 sheets for $19.99 in quantity), so I'm able to keep the whole cost of a CD in a jewel case with printing for under $1 per disc.

It's not the fastest way to go, but for small runs, it'll let you stay competitive.

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 12:54 pm

Check out the lightscribe drives. You can print out a cd label
with very fine print for copyright laws etc. and never have to
buy any ink. The new HP one works perfectly and costs around
$50.

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 2:39 pm

Thanks aracu, That looks like a winner!

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:11 pm

computer printers = aggravation

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 11:55 am

aracu wrote:

Check out the lightscribe drives. You can print out a cd label
with very fine print for copyright laws etc. and never have to
buy any ink. The new HP one works perfectly and costs around
$50.

FWIW, my Lightscribe drive takes much longer to 'etch' a monochrome label on a disk (all that you get is one color) than burning the disk does. I 'lightscribed' about 5 disks and haven't used it since. Seems like it was 20 minutes or so to print the label, but my memory may be off. Either way it was soooo slow.

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 9:14 pm

That's a good point, although a printer can take days to
fix when its not working right. If you keep the lightscribe
label simple and minimal it can look good and take around
six minutes to burn.

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:06 am

I use both the light scribe and the ebson R380 a great 1 at a time cd/dvd printer

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:31 pm

That sounds interesting. How do you divide the tasks between them
and align the two images?

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 8:40 pm

aracu wrote:

That sounds interesting. How do you divide the tasks between them
and align the two images?

ha, ha, That sounds like a cool idea but i dont use them both at the same time, Laughing

I wonder what it will look like to print on a light scrib cd.

Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:42 pm

aracu wrote:

That's a good point, although a printer can take days to
fix when its not working right. If you keep the lightscribe
label simple and minimal it can look good and take around
six minutes to burn.

I also use a lightscribe printer, but never for a run, simply for demos, to give my clients something other than a bulk CD-R with sharpie writing on it. I'm looking into something along the lines of the 50 CD duplicators for making larger runs of disks. I made a run of about 35 lightscribe disks. Unfortunately I have 2 drives and I planned on burning the data on one drive, and then burning the label with the other simultaneously, but I couldn't figure out how to do both at the same time in Nero. Took me 2 days and alot of sitting around starting at my computer bored out of my mind....

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