CD printing

[ffutures]

I'm thinking of switching over from CDs with separately-printed adhesive labels to inkjet-printable CDs; there's very little difference in the price of the media, and I'm always a little worried that someone might get a damaged drive as a result of a label coming loose.

There are snags, of course. I can print labels relatively cheaper on the laser, can't print CDs that way; I'd need to buy an inkjet, and inkjet ink is much more expensive. Also, I can load a stack of labels and print them without supervision; that isn't true of CDs unless I spend a fortune on a dedicated stack-loading printer, which definitely isn't going to happen. The printer is going to be a bottleneck.

So - given all of the above, is there any relatively inexpensive inkjet which can print CDs fairly fast and fairly cheaply? Don't need particularly high resolution, or any other frills.

Comments

[roo2.livejournal.com]

I just bought an HP Photosmart D7560 specifically for printing on CDs and DVDs. It was inexpensive and is pretty quick. My biggest complaint is the software that comes with it is incredibly buggy. I have it running on my Mac and it routinely informs me that my printer can't print on DVDs, then it does it. There have been some complaints about this and some other bugs at the HP forums. If you run Windows the Windows version may be better. But so far the printing is quick, I haven't had any issues with smearing and the graphics look good when printed on the discs.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The problem I need to be careful about is that this will be used in bursts - the odd CD here and there, and every so often a bulk run of say 200 disks. I'm leaning more towards Epson because they can be fitted with large ink tanks, not sure you can do that with HP.

[pengshui-master.livejournal.com]

We used a Epson R300 to print something like 200 CDs a year or two ago as it seem like the cheapest option to do these volumes (even over professional stamping).

However to get the ink cost reasonable - we first installed a continous ink system to the printer.

I think the software as ok, but to be fair we captured the print job and sent as a raw print job after the first couple of prints.

This meant we didn't need to use any special software to print the alrady prepared images.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd been thinking about Epson because I know there's a continuous ink system for some printers, but I really don't know much about it - how easy is it to fit and use?

[pengshui-master.livejournal.com]

To fit,for someone of your skills , I'd say it was straightforward. The pipes from the tanks, feed special cartridges (provided) so it mainly a case of changing the cartridges. The only difficult bit is routing the ink pipes out of printer.

The one issue we had was it needed some extra support for the pipes about half way down the body of the printer to ensure they were kept clear (although it was only an occasional problem ) of the carriage. But a sticky pad and a bent piece of spare metal formed a easy and effective bracket.

IIRC You do use a bit more ink in cleaning cycles as you have more tubing to purge air bubbles from but to be honest , it's not a lot more and the ink is much cheaper anyway.

We were so impressed we bought a second one (and printer).

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

wow, that sounds fab!

I've had Epson printers in the past, and have switched to HP, because I don't print for months sometimes, and the Epson's inkjets would clog and I couldn't unclog them, so I'd gone through a couple of Epsons but the HPs just keep working, or you replace the cartridges and they start working again (as I did this weekend for one that hadn't been used in 18 months).

But the continous ink system sounds stupendous, particularly for longer runs.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Epsons need to be run fairly frequently or they clog. The Epson tech support for their pro line says to run them once a week for best results.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That might be a problem - I probably wouldn't use it nearly that often.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

So you'd need to print a page with something on that used all colours. Not terribly onerous (unless you were planning on packing the printer away) but definitely something you'd need to remember…

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I suppose so - I'm crap at remembering stuff like that but it's doable, especially if I also use it to print photos.

[draconin.livejournal.com]

I've been using a Canon PIXMA MP610 for some time now. It is incredibly simple to use and produces excellent results on printable DVD/CDs. To print on a DVD you just drop down a little flap and slide the DVD in on a supplied tray. Takes about 20-30sec per DVD I think to print - the determining factor would, I imagine, be how fast you could feed them in rather than how fast each one printed. It comes with software that's easy to use in producing the labels.

I think the current equivalent model is the 640 now (http://www.canon.com.au/en-AU/For-You/Printers/PIXMA-InkJet-Printers/MP640). Mine cost about AUD$180 on special some two years ago.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

For some reason Canon ink is always expensive in the UK, no idea why. Thanks for the suggestion though.