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OT: DVD duplicators worth considering
I know zilch about these things, much less which ones are worth looking at. Any thoughts? One that I’m struggling with is a Rimage 2000i, if that helps, but it is very tempermental.
The need is to be able to burn copies and print the surface in quantities of several discs to a couple hundred. Mac or PC driven, or stand alone, doesn’t matter.
What do you all use?
Have a wonderful day.
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15 Replies
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I own 2, AMTREN SA4 duplicators (200 disc capacity, 4 burners)
They are unreliable too. But of all the duplicators out there they have the largest capacity. They work most of the time unattended but at night when I’m not here, there is a 50/50 chance something will happen that will cause it to hang.
Printer timeout
Disc somehow falls and jams a drive so it won’t close.This one was great: Clogged black ink cartridge that caused a solid black print on the disc to be a gray ugly unacceptable color so I had to throw away 200 DVD’s and they were full 4.2GB discs!!!
I NEVER do print jobs overnight now.And the robot arm cable has to be replaced every
3 months when the pick arm starts acting erratic.
Bad design on that. The mfg won’t send a bag
of cables either, you have to order them individual
so I bought my own cabling and connectors and make my own.Most of the time though they work fine.
To my knowledge there is only one duplicator out there that is reported to be rock solid reliable in every way, but they want 35,000 for it I think. Primera Technology used to have it but don’t carry it anymore, I don’t think anyone was buying them.
It only had a 350 disc capacity at that price.No thanks, for a fraction of that I’ll just check them once in awhile during the day.
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Wow…
We use the Primera Bravo series duplicators. We have a Bravo II and a Bravo Pro. Both work great. But I will say that the software is much better on the PC than the Mac. The Bravo II is around $1900 and the Bravo Pro is about $2600.
Personally, I would purchase the Bravo Pro. Its beefer and can dup up to 100 discs at a time. It has two burners whereas the Bravo II only has one burner.
Give it a looksie…
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey -
Primera Bravo II was a nice printer, but the colors had to be tweaked so far off in Photoshop, we gave up on it. And though they claim Mac support, it didn’t.
DiscMakers Medley unit is a decent DVD burner, but a lousy printer. If you just need basic black and white or simple images, it’s not bad. If you’re looking for photographic type of printing, not for you.
We’re investigating this very thing right now and are looking at some 10 burner units and a separate printer. I’ll post back when we find something new that we’re going to try.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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That’ll be great Walter, thanks.
Have a wonderful day.
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[Chris Poisson] “That’ll be great Walter, thanks.”
Just got off the phone with the folks at CDROM2GO and had a great conversation and settled on this unit:
https://www.cdrom2go.com/product-moreinfo.asp?P=E08013Z00000000000SE4
It’s a Flexwriter IV unit that can take a load of 220 discs at a time, burn 4 discs at a time and he assured me the quality of the printing would be on part with the Primera Bravo II. It’s a Windows only machine but that’s to be expected. One nice option is the Photo Ink cartridge allowing 6 color printing, that will be a nice option to test.
We spent nearly an hour on the phone going over many different machines and scenarios and I think this machine will suit our needs. We’ll have it about this time next week so I’ll let you guys know what the initial impressions are.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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Jeeze, that was fast, thanks! Looks perfect for what I need.
Have a wonderful day.
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[walter biscardi] “Just got off the phone with the folks at CDROM2GO and had a great conversation and settled on this unit:
https://www.cdrom2go.com/product-moreinfo.asp?P=E08013Z00000000000SE4
It’s a Flexwriter IV unit that can take a load of 220 discs at a time, burn 4 discs at a time and he assured me the quality of the printing would be on part with the Primera Bravo II.”
That is the AMTREN SA4 unit, just rebadged for OEM purchases. (amtren designs/builds them) Discmakers
used to sell them until their contract was revoked for poor customer service.Read my post to get the nitty gritty on how this thing really works.
It does print nice, but you have to set it for maximum dpi with pastel colors or they don’t appear smooth and look bad. A full image takes 3 minutes to print at that resolution and fine text is aliased on these printers.
oh and that robot cable WILL wear out and make the arm erratic and needing a replacement cable about every 3 months on average. Its a design flaw these all have.
It still is though the best duplicator out there for raw capacity.
Another thing I really like about these is no
more proprietary cartridges. The printer takes
HP 57 & 58 inkjet cartridges you can buy anywhere. -
[Chris Borjis] “oh and that robot cable WILL wear out and make the arm erratic and needing a replacement cable about every 3 months on average. Its a design flaw these all have.”
With the way the arm moves around, that doesn’t surprise me quite honestly. That cable is going to be abused by the system and if that’s the only thing that needs major replacing, no problem on my side.
I’m most concerned about a good print image. I actually forwarded your comments about the print quality to CDROM2GO and put them on notice that this thing better work as promised or it’s going back.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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Walter,
The primera signature IV disc printer can print fine
text WITHOUT aliasing and its only half the dpi at 600 max.
But it uses a composite cartridge so the black always fades
out with orange around it eventually and looks terrible. Parts are no longer available for them.Another thing about the printer you should know, after
doing say 500 or more discs, the image will start to
randomly shift over the disc showing the unprinted area
of the disc in the top or sides, randomly. This is because
it uses a clear strip of plastic with etched lines for tracking. Ink mist gets in them and it loses tracking
so you have to clean it with paper towel and alcohol often.And last but not least, after doing several thousand discs
the printer at some point will only be able to print black text (for simple labeling) if you set it on max 1200 dpi because otherwise it smudges on certain font sizes which
is VERY irritating to me right now. I can’t tell if its the printer or the inkjet carts causing it (they all do it now) but it happened just out of warranty of course, so buy an extended one if you can.Make sure your unit comes with the new NEC drives.
The Plextor 716-A drives are junk and I’ve replaced
all 4 drives 3 times know (gone through 12 that went bad over a year)there is a robot cable on my earlier model SA4 (slightly altered design)
exactly like the newer one (you are looking at) and
the way its positioned and tensioned it does not
wear the cable to sending a bad signal every 3 months like the other. This cable is over 4 yrs old and still working.You can tell the earlier model definitely cost
more to make though with its design.when you get it, you will want to move the robot cable on the left side of the shaft instead of the right. with it on the right, when you run 200 discs through, at around 100 the cable will bend
itself into the discs and flip the disc off the robot arm. I still can’t believe they thought that
was the proper design.still though, with these issues, its still the best duplicator out there for a reasonable price. That one priced at 30,000 supposedly has zero failure on burning or printing and has 350 disc capacity.
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Ok guys…
Here’s the thing…
Duplicators are awesome when they work. How long that will be… no one really knows. All I can say is, how much does it cost for a third party duplication per disc and how much does it cost for your own duplicator? If it lasts a couple of years, you’ve probably made your money’s worth.
As for printing issues with the Primera, I haven’t seen any of these and I have never had a client say that orange isn’t the right shade of orange. The Bravo series are lightweights but I have never had to make more than 300 copies at one time. The Bravo II printed 1500 its first year before we had to clean it. Now, we have a Bravo Pro so that we can do more. The Bravo II is a great backup and small job printer.
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey
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