Looking for info - CD manufacturing

[NL5]

Does anyone know if it is possible to manufacture cd's in a small shop operation? I don't mean CDR's. I want to be able to do small runs of real cd's for bands. I just don't know where to begin to look at the machinery it would take. Or if it is even feasable.

Thanks in advance.

 

[TechnoKid]

youre gonna need quite a capital investement; equipment ain't cheap, esp high volume pressers and silk screen printers.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Before you invest, find people who want something done

I'd reccomend starting with getting a computer and 4 or 5 52x cdr drives from newegg or something

Once you get an order, use those 4 or 5 drives for some time till you can afford other tools

 

[NL5]

Where do I find info on the presses? I don't need "high volume" just 1000 or so per run.

 

[NL5]

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo
Before you invest, find people who want something done

I'd reccomend starting with getting a computer and 4 or 5 52x cdr drives from newegg or something

Once you get an order, use those 4 or 5 drives for some time till you can afford other tools

I'm already at that stage. I want to be able to make real cd's if it is at all possible. I know there are a lot of oplaces that can do it now, so it can't be that expensive. (may still be outta my league tho)

 

[NL5]

Anybody?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: NL5
Where do I find info on the presses? I don't need "high volume" just 1000 or so per run.

AFAIK CD pressing equipment costs hundreds of thousands if not millions. It's been years since I last looked, but at the time most or all of the medium-sized CD replication houses didn't actually have CD replication in-house they acted as resellers / schedulers for CD presses owned by monsters like Sony.

But do some googling if you want the current info.

 

[NL5]

OK, if that is the case I'm screwed. It seemed as tho small scale replication was on the rise, so I thought the equipment had come down a ways.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: NL5
OK, if that is the case I'm screwed. It seemed as tho small scale replication was on the rise, so I thought the equipment had come down a ways.

Well, you could look into becoming one of the schedulers / resellers. At the time, the CD press owners didn't want to deal with individual orders, so they had the small to medium size companies batch up orders into blocks. Individual jobs within those blocks could still be small runs like 1,000 discs.

 

[TechnoKid]

Originally posted by: NL5
OK, if that is the case I'm screwed. It seemed as tho small scale replication was on the rise, so I thought the equipment had come down a ways.

This website has a factory tour video of their equipment. That looks like multi hundred thousand dollar equipment!:Q You could contact them and ask them who you would contact about purchasing equipment to start pressing your own cds.

 

[nageov3t]

http://www.cds.com/

 

[Bootprint]

Is this what you're looking for?

microboards, small scale duplicators.


link, might find more info here.

 

[TechnoKid]

Originally posted by: Bootprint
Is this what you're looking for?

thats replication (disc pressing) alright, but he wants to know where to get the equipment to do it himself.