Hi,

Are there printers that can print on any CD, even ones that have been
previously printed commercially (silkscreened)? I thought you could only
print on the special coated discs to do it but someone is telling me
otherwise.

Thanks

TDK do some, but they are not great quality.

They can print on almost any surface.


Mikey

Apart from inkjet, which can only print on "inkjet printable" discs, you
might be talking about thermal labelers.
You can see some of those at www.rima.com . They use fairly expensive
consumable ribbons, but will print very nice one-color lettering/graphics on
any disc.


"Craig McWalter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:bJz3f.38046$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> Are there printers that can print on any CD, even ones that have been
> previously printed commercially (silkscreened)? I thought you could only
> print on the special coated discs to do it but someone is telling me
> otherwise.
>
> Thanks
>
>

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:47:03 GMT, "Craig McWalter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Are there printers that can print on any CD, even ones that have been
>previously printed commercially (silkscreened)? I thought you could only
>print on the special coated discs to do it but someone is telling me
>otherwise.
>
>Thanks
>

Thermal printers can print on any CD surface. The "ink" is actually a
melted wax, so the effect is very similar to professional silk
screening. Some work like inkjets by melting the wax pellets/crayons
and spraying the melted wax. Some use ribbons, and use a process
similar to the old dot matrix printers to transfer the wax to the
surface. The upside of thermals are that you can print on any CD
surface, the results are very professional looking, it's dry as soon
as you pop it out of the printer, and it's waterproof. The downside
of thermal technology is that the printers are expensive, as is their
"ink", and the affordable units with pricing below $1000 are typically
monochrome.

Inkjets CD printers require you to either use specially coated discs,
or apply an adhesive inkjet label to the surface of the target disc.
The upside is that you can get the same level of print quality as you
can with the paper inkjets, so you've got a lot of colours available
and you can do photo realistic prints. The drawbacks, aside from
having to use special print surfaces are that the inks aren't usually
waterproof, it's quite obvious it was printed on an inkjet, and it
takes several hours to fully dry. While I wouldn't consider them
cheap to buy or run, they're MUCH cheaper to buy and use than thermal
CD printers.

Just be aware that if you intend to print over a previously printed
disc, you still need to cover up the previous printing. I'm aware of
no printers that put any sort of "base coat" to cover up what was
there previously. You'd probably have to stick an adhesive label on
the disc if you want to do that, regardless of the technology you
choose to employ.

---------------------------------------------
Thanks.


MCheu

> Are there printers that can print on any CD, even ones that have been
> previously printed commercially (silkscreened)? I thought you could only
> print on the special coated discs to do it but someone is telling me
> otherwise.

What is your application? As someone else pointed out there are wax
transfer systems, the slightly cheaper thermal ribbon systems, and I
imagine someone could retrofit a flat bed plotter to handle tiny
sharpies and CDs.

I could print on standard uncoated CDs with my epson r200, but the
output was dotty, took months to dry, and could be rubbed off with a
finger.

Thanks, guys. I will pass the info along.


"Craig McWalter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:bJz3f.38046$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> Are there printers that can print on any CD, even ones that have been
> previously printed commercially (silkscreened)? I thought you could only
> print on the special coated discs to do it but someone is telling me
> otherwise.
>
> Thanks
>
>

I've never heard of such a device.

Art

Craig McWalter wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Are there printers that can print on any CD, even ones that have been
> previously printed commercially (silkscreened)? I thought you could only
> print on the special coated discs to do it but someone is telling me
> otherwise.
>
> Thanks
>
>

MCheu <(E-Mail Removed)> wrotenews:q7stk1htmp5o0cv767se6sm8kfa36pp01h@
4ax.com:

> On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:47:03 GMT, "Craig McWalter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>Are there printers that can print on any CD, even ones that have been
>>previously printed commercially (silkscreened)? I thought you could only
>>print on the special coated discs to do it but someone is telling me
>>otherwise.
>>
>>Thanks
>>
>
> Thermal printers can print on any CD surface. The "ink" is actually a
> melted wax, so the effect is very similar to professional silk
> screening. Some work like inkjets by melting the wax pellets/crayons
> and spraying the melted wax. Some use ribbons, and use a process
> similar to the old dot matrix printers to transfer the wax to the
> surface. The upside of thermals are that you can print on any CD
> surface, the results are very professional looking, it's dry as soon
> as you pop it out of the printer, and it's waterproof. The downside
> of thermal technology is that the printers are expensive, as is their
> "ink", and the affordable units with pricing below $1000 are typically
> monochrome.
>
> Inkjets CD printers require you to either use specially coated discs,
> or apply an adhesive inkjet label to the surface of the target disc.
> The upside is that you can get the same level of print quality as you
> can with the paper inkjets, so you've got a lot of colours available
> and you can do photo realistic prints. The drawbacks, aside from
> having to use special print surfaces are that the inks aren't usually
> waterproof, it's quite obvious it was printed on an inkjet, and it
> takes several hours to fully dry. While I wouldn't consider them
> cheap to buy or run, they're MUCH cheaper to buy and use than thermal
> CD printers.
>
> Just be aware that if you intend to print over a previously printed
> disc, you still need to cover up the previous printing. I'm aware of
> no printers that put any sort of "base coat" to cover up what was
> there previously. You'd probably have to stick an adhesive label on
> the disc if you want to do that, regardless of the technology you
> choose to employ.
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> Thanks.
>
>
> MCheu


You forgot Lightscribe....


--
-- His Excellency, Mapanari
Bishop of the Austin Chapter of the
Flying Spaghetti Monster, Lord of all.

In message <tC64f.198519$1i.94712@pd7tw2no>, Arthur Entlich
<e-(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>I've never heard of such a device.
>Art
>Craig McWalter wrote:
>> Hi,
>> Are there printers that can print on any CD, even ones that have
>>been
>> previously printed commercially (silkscreened)? I thought you could only
>> print on the special coated discs to do it but someone is telling me
>> otherwise.
>> Thanks

It seems Casio do something, eg: Ebay item no: 6811709255

From the looks of it this (end of line) machine only prints text, but
presumably a more expensive version would print anything.

--
Timothy

Mapanari wrote:
> You forgot Lightscribe....

Thanks.