Has anyone ever used the Primera Bravo II AutoPrinter (No drives, for printing only).

Or can anyone advise on a stand alone disc printer that will be capable of doing up to 1000 discs per month. preferably bellow €1000.

Thanks
Pilky

I'm pretty sure any/all of them can do that, though the semi-industrial ones will be more expensive than that (new).

The questions you should be thinking about are:

1. What cost per disc are you looking at as a target, consumables-wise?

2. What type of output, quality-wise, do you need?

3. What printing technology would work the best for you (ink-jet vs. thermal) and how many colors (1 vs. 3-4)?

4. Do you need to be able to print on all blanks, or are you ok paying a premium for ink-jet or thermal friendly discs?

etc.

-brendan

Thanks bhoar,

The cost is the major issue, i need a printer that can do batch loads, i don't have the time to put each disk individualy, so a batch of miniumum 20 posibly 50 at a time.

The quality of print should be ok but doesn't have to be mega resolution. Only thing that i will be printing on the disk is a logo, web address and copyright warning. so maybe 20% of the surface.

If i could find a cheeper option i could get away with only using black or one color.

I don't know which would be best, thermal or ink jet.

Thermal sounds like the best bet for simple graphics and text. Thermal uses more expensive "ink", but coverage is minimal and the cost of the discs will be WAY lower. Most all of them should provide the info you need to calculate costs. The other benefit of thermal is that it is water and smudge resistant, where inkjet is not.

I'm wondering what you will be using to BURN 1000 discs per month.

Thanks CDan, i have been looking into thermal printers and they do seem the best option.

Can anyone recomend a good one?

I will be duplicating the discs on a 1:11 copy station.

Thanks
Pilky

There's a selection of printers at www.rima.com. I realize they are not in Europe, but it's a good place to shop.

Just to make things more complicated:

Thermal disc printers (excepting the most common low end "label writing" type that don't do full coverage and aren't available for autoloaders) tend to cost a lot more than the inkjet printers.

However, per print, thermal printers cost less than inkjet. But if you want to avoid huge upfront costs (US$2000-$6000 for the printer alone before robotics), inkjet is the way to go. Note that you'll need to use inkjet disc media. You could try to cheap out and use a standard inkjet with labeling sheets but that's going to be really annoying and if impossible if you're writing DVDs (which cannot reliably accept a label without risking drive damage).

RImage and Primera are the two most common brands for integrated or near-integrated dupe+print technology. They might be the only ones. Mediatechnics and MF-Digital are two other options, but they tend to incorporate printers made by (for?) RImage and maybe Primera.

Unfortunately, RImage's low end units appear to start at a higher price bracket than Primera.

It seems to me that on price, projected hassle and support, one of the lower to medium level primera units that integrate the printer in with the robotics (as you seem to have already homed in on) is the right choice.

Just FYI, 1000 discs a month isn't a big deal for any of the automated machines. Just make sure you take into consideration the per-cartridge (or per-cartridge set) cost of the ink.

-brendan