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

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?

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)

Google it! or
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/epson_r800.html

We have a Signature Pro from Primera that we really like

Link removed

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....

Hey thanks very much!

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.

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.

Thanks aracu, That looks like a winner!

computer printers = aggravation

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.

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

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

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

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....

I'm with Tom - personally, I use a Primera Bravo II printer/duplicator and love it! Not having to reach in and place a disc after every print job is a blessing!

I've also used the Epsons (still have it - the 600) but it's frustrating to have to do one disc at a time.

I've also tried lightscribe. Most of my clients weren't happy with it. They wanted color images and images they could easily read in a poorly lit car or club.

I do short run duplication for a lot of bands in my area, and I have a couple Epson R260 inkjet CD printers and the Uprint thermal.

The R260s are the newest from Epson, and they've upgraded the printheads and the ink, the results are pretty unbelievable... Virtually no pixelization, vivid colors, and from what Epson says, the new inks are supposed to resist scratching and water.

In addition to normal printable CD-Rs, for all my personal label projects I use Discmakers' watershield CD-Rs, which are already scratchproof and waterproof. The printed image on the finished CD is incredible, high contrast, very vivid. The resolution is actually much better than silkscreening, and even some of the offset disc printing samples I've seen.

Of course, the drawback to inkjet printing is the ink costs, which I offset by buying generic cartridges on Ebay.

The thermal printer... Eh... Nothing special at all. The text isn't especially clear, and the ribbons don't last very long, I maybe got 75 discs out of the last one. Like Tom said, you get what you pay for.

runnin_runnin wrote: In addition to normal printable CD-Rs, for all my personal label projects I use Discmakers' watershield CD-Rs, which are already scratchproof and waterproof.

Scratchproof I can understand but waterproof? Thats something I only worry about with camping equipment. Whats the need for waterproof CD's?

PKLehmer wrote: [quote=runnin_runnin]In addition to normal printable CD-Rs, for all my personal label projects I use Discmakers' watershield CD-Rs, which are already scratchproof and waterproof.

Scratchproof I can understand but waterproof? Thats something I only worry about with camping equipment. Whats the need for waterproof CD's?

Haha, yeah I know! It's really just in comparison to other inkjet printable CD-Rs. If you get a drop of water on a normal inkjet printable CD-R, the ink will run... With the watershield it doesn't. It just goes toward durability, and makes the product more attractive to my customers. I agree, though, that the scratchproof is the big plus, and that the waterproof is more of a bonus.

I have to agree that lightscribe is not practical for duplicating many
cd copies, but it's nice for giving a client one or two copies.

JoeH wrote: 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.

I have been a die-hard Epson user for a long time. But lately got disappointed by their R-260. The ink runs out super fast and you can see the so called empty cartridge is still pretty soaked. The worse part is out of ink can be in the middle of the print. The old R-200 will stop at least after the disc is printed. If you change the cartridge and insert a new disc, it will print whatever it was left over before the ink was out. I sometime question whether R-260 was designed by Epson.

Let me try the R-800 as you have suggested.