Are there any companies that will take a CD label you’ve designed and reproduce it in mass quantities so you can apply them to CD-Rs?
Note: I’m not looking for CD duplicating companies (the ones that print the CD, cases, labels, etc), I just want one that offers label duplication only. Thanks
There is a printer by Epson – I think it’s an Epson Photo 960 (I think it’s in the 900s) – that allows you to put the actual CD in a cartridge so that the label is printed directly on the CD.
You need the CDs with the plain white “printable” surface, but they aren’t hard to get. I f you’re going for a run larger than 50 thought, it would be a pain, it’s not fast. But you can burn-and-print as needed.
Some artist I’ve worked with have found that stickers can be a little problematic at times, but I’m sure there are Printers (capitalized to indicate a job title for a human, not an output machine) that would be happy to accommodate you. (These are the same Printers that make postcards, posters, pamplets etc.)
Be warned printing charges can be quite expensive, especialy if they have to die cut the stickers in a perfectly round shape with a hole in the middle – possibly expensive enough to be getting close to actual CD manufacturing costs, to be honest.
If you’re on a limited budget, and are doing shorter runs, it may be cheaper to just get the Epson printer for about $300 or see if you can get a really good deal on a short run (500 CDs) from a CD manufacturer.
There aren’t any great alternatives. E-mail me with details about your job and I get a recommendation from our manufacturer and/or Printer if you’d like.
There are a number of companies that produce custom-printed pressure-sensitive CD labels, on a roll of 5000 labels or so. My CD vendor was looking into those as an alternative to custom-printed CDs. It’s not cheap, but its not outrageous either.
Stickers are cheesy, you should get screen printed disks made. You can do a small run (~500) at a place for the same price as buying a printer, etc., and it looks WAY more professional.
Thanks for the advice, but I’m not still not sure what course of action to take. Perhaps if I detail my situation, you guys can provide me with some incite.
My website will be retailing DVDs I’ve produced containing various videos. I think there may be a potentially large market for it, but of course, I have no idea how receptive the sales will be (it could be an utter failure). As a result, I have no indications of how many DVDs to produce (which I plan to sell for $9.95), which would mean I wouldn’t know how many to order if I did have a profession duplicator take care of the DVD producing and packaging for me. Also, the duplicator would have to produce them cheaply enough so I can make a profit off $9.95. Another problem may be that I’m not sure what the time delay involved with having a professional DVD duplicator is. The DVDs are sort of topical, thus releasing them ASAP is important.
Just so you know, what I was planning on doing was burn the DVD-Rs myself (I have a DVD burner), apply a custom DVD sticker label (this is the only part I’m not too keen on) and then package the DVD itself (I have copious cases and was planning to have Kinkos reproduced my DVD cover labels. Then I would ship them out from my house. The total cost is only 2-3 bucks, thus I’d be earning a 7 dollar profit on each DVD sold. Any input would be appreciated. Many thanks.
Some of the CD/DVD players recommend against using sticky labels. I think the fear is twofold. If the labels starts to unstick, is that a word?, it could damage the players internals. And a label that is not perfectly centered could cause imbalance and read/write problems.
And I have the Epson Photo Stylus 960 and it does a nice job of printing directly on the CDs. Takes about 1 minute or so.
Gary - Epson Photo Stylus 960 sounds very appealing to me, thus i have a few questions, if that’s ok. How good is the quality compared (I know you said it does a “nice job”, but perhaps a little elaboration of this would be helpful)? How exactly does the printer work, does it have a specific slot to place CDs/DVDs? How much do the ink cartridges cost? Finally, does the ink smear and is it possible to print an all black label on the DVD? Many thanks.
Correction from my previous post:
*How good is the quality compared to both sitcky labels and standard DVDs?
Well I’d say the quality depends to some extent on the quality of your artwork to begin with. It’s certainly as good as anything I’ve printed on labels in the past.
The printer has three possible paper paths. Two in the back and one in the front. The rear entries, no jokes please, handle sheet and roll paper. The front path, my favorite, Hey I said no jokes!, is used for CDs and cardstock. To print a CD, asuming you have the prohram that came with the printer is to select the correct media and place the CD onto the carrier. When you issue the print command, the CD on the carrier is sucked into the printer and the printer then prints and advances the media for the next pass. It seems to take a minute or so. But it’s not a production machine. To print say 60 CDs would probably take an hour and a half. I’ll admit I never timed it so another user may have more accurate numbers.
Epson inks on paper are waterproof and won’t run if held under hot running water. I’d think that the performance on CD’s would be similar.
The printer uses seven individual ink tanks. They are available from Epson at $11.95 each. You only need to replace the one that’s dry.
Don’t know if you could print all black. Don’t see why not. But I’d guess you mean mostly black or a black background.
Hope this helps.
Thanks a lot Gary (ignore my e-mail). I do have 1 more question though, why does it require 7 tanks of ink? Do they all have to be occupied, and does it come with any preinstalled? Thanks!
Dude The printer uses 6 colors to obtain photo quality. Colors used are: Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, Black, Light Magenta, and Light Cyan. That’s six. There are two black tanks, that’s seven.
When you send a print job, a dialog box appears that indicates how much ink remains in each tank.
As with most printers, the tanks that come with the purchase are not full. That’s just what they seem to do. So seven tanks at $11.95 each sounds high, but depending on what you print they most likely won’t run out at the same time. My practice is to start out with a spare for each, then when I need more, order two so I always have some on hand. Don’t want to run out when you promised a job to somebody.
BTW, the printer did not come with the CD printing software or carrier. There was a coupon included that I had to send in. So be sure that you can get the parts.
The printer also comes with a cutter that plugs into the front and can be set to cut the photos to length whan using roll paper. Won’t work with CDs of course.
Just a few more questions (sorry). How frequently do the tanks run out, on average (I know it varies)? Did the “coupon” provide the carrier for free, or was that as an additional cost? Finally, the photos you mentioned at the end, did that have any relation to the DVD question, or was it just a footnote (sorry, I’m a dunce)?
Can’t tell you how often they run out. Just too many variables. How dark is the image? How large? How often has the printer needed to clean the nozzles?
The carrier for the CDs was free, but as mentioned I needed to submit the coupon that came with the printer. The offer included the carrier as well as the software. At the Epson site http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=22403490 you can click on the “free CD print kit” button and print a coupon for the kit. The coupon says you need to have bought the printer by 12/31/03. I can’t sayif that information is still accurate.
The reference to the cutter was for the roll film printing ability. For instance you can load a roll of 4" wide paper and print 4"x6" prints. As each print exits, the cutter severs the print from the rest of the roll and it drops into a catch basket hanging off the front of the cutter. This has nothing to do with printing on CDs, I just mentioned it in for additional information.
I just noticed that according to the Epson site their Photo Stylus 900 also prints on CDs and DVDs. It however only uses two cartridges. This means that if you run out of yellow, you need to replace the cartridge even though it might have plenty of the other colors. That means if you print images that use predominatly one or two colors you’ll be tossing away "empty’ cartridges that might have quite a bit of ink still in them. That’s why a separate tank for each color might be better.
Gary I thank you, thank you, thank you as well. We’ve been cosidering a 960 for occasional one-offs, but haven’t been able to find a detailed enough review or a user’s comments.
Duder to have CD/DVDs manufactured which INCLUDES insert printing, printing on the CD face, jewels case and shrink wrap, 1000 CDs would be somewhere around $1.50 per CD/DVD, giver or take 30 cents or so (sometimes you can get a better deal, sometimes not). The manufactured discs would be made from a glass master and not a CD-R or DVD writer.
I know manufacturers that do promo runs in which the CD face is printed, but there’s no jewel case – instead they use a plain black or white cardboard envelope with a window. This is cheaper too becuase it gets rid of the huge costs of insert printing. So keep that in mind as well.
It all depends on whether you want to have discs in stock or make them as needed.
Happy if the information helps. I bought the 960 to replace an aging 750. It was getting somewhat difficult to find the cartridges for the 750.
Happy as I am with the Epson, from what I read some of the HP units are catching up so far as photo quality goes. You may wish to check them out. I have no idea if any of them can print on CDs though.
And if you buy the Epson, be sure to stick with Epsons ink and paper. I’ve tried non Epson paper in my printer and not benn pleased with the results. The printable CDs I bought via the net have worked fine though. They are Imation CD-R 80min/700MB White Inkjet. Looks like their number is 31123-50. These are CDs, not DVDs.
A recent article in a widly distributed computer email list (langa.com) reported that a test of many recorded CDs, from various sources and of various ages, showed that the only ones that consistently had read problems were those that had been labeled with the sticky labels. Apparently something in the glue on the labels reacts with the surface coating of the CDs, and makes them fail quickly.
It seems likely that this will also be true for DVDs, possibly even more so. But if your DVDs are topical, and used only for a short time without being archived, this may not matter to you or your customers.
That sounds interesting T-bon, do you know where I can find that article (I’m not doubting you at all, just sounds interesting)
www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-11-06.htm
It’s the Nov 6th issue, available in the archives section at www.langa.com