Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

[iWhat]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Hello,

I found this forum while searching for information on the reliability of certain autoloading cd duplicators that I am considering purchasing.

A lot of you seems very knowledgeable in this domain and I would appreciate your recommendations.

I've narrowed it down to the following units:

- R-Quest 7200 2 drive unit with FlashJet printer
- Microboards MX-2
- Primera Bravo Pro
- MF Digital Scribe 9602 with PicoJet printer

My primary concerns are reliability of the robotics, output speed, then printer quality.

Which is these units should I be leaning towards? Do any of you have any personal experience with these units?

I plan on producing up to 2000 CDs per month so I need a unit capable of handling that workload. Are there any other units I should consider instead?

Thank you in advance for your help. I've been researching duplicators for over a month and haven't been able to find too much information on them besides on EMediaLive. I am anxious to finally make my purchase.

Again, your feedback is well appreciated.

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

iWhat -

Well, I can't give you perfect advice, because I don't use the machines for duplication or printing. In addition, I have an "experience bias" toward machines that are controlled via a standard serial port or a USB<->serial bridge (vs. proprietary USB protocols) as well as machines that regularly show up for resale on ebay, meaning I've never acquired an R-Quest unit, bravo pro or Microboards MX-2.

But I have variants of all but the R-Quest unit here.

So I can only give you rough, general purpose advice.

1. Duplication costs (and expenses/profit margins) are very dependent on printing costs. These in turn, are dependent on cost of media types required/supported by the printing technology, # of disks per ink cartridge/toner unit, cartridge type (one combined/CMYK separates), whether generic cartridges are available, whether continuous ink setups are available, etc. I can't point you to the cheapest reliable technology, but I just gave you pointers to the stuff you need to research.

2. Primera's business model is similar to the "razor blades" model. They use barcodes to enforce purchase of their own (usually more expensive) cartridges, which means you won't find generic cartridges being sold (but you can buy expensive sheets of fake barcodes on ebay for using generic cartridges). I do not know if the other three do this or not, but I suspect not.

3. If you need to depend on the hardware for your business, I am of the mind that, given a single sum of money, it's probably a safer bet to buy two smaller units, each with half the capacity vs. one larger unit, all other things being the same. If a single unit fails, you can see why having two would be better that having one. If you need the features of the larger unit, then make sure you have a warranty (and can afford one) with on-site repair or 24-hour replacement features.

4. Some of the units you pointed to are peripherals, others may be full blown windows computers inside the duplicators. Keep that in mind in terms of system cost and support issues. I suspect that the windows inside ones are more reliable as long as you follow their rules and never install anything not supported by the supplier.

5. If the unit you buy uses a "separate" printer, it is best to purchase the duplicator/printer together as a package, because they often require custom mounting plates that you would have to search out separately for several hundred dollars if you bought the duplicator and printer separately.

6. Froogle is your friend on pricing, but always double check with a deeper google search as well as old fashioned telephone shopping: sometimes sales sites aren't indexed on froogle.

7. I like the picker in the contemporary MF Digital units and, the 9602's use of two drive positions can increase throughput. Microboards units' robotics are simpler, but do require the drive tray to close on Accepts as well as Rejects, which can slow the unload/load cycle a little bit.

Lastly, I will note that I have hardly answered your questions, and given you more questions to ponder.

[iWhat]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

I appreciate your insight bhoar.

The thing I've noticed while researching these units is that once I think my mind is made up, there are always new questions and issues that come up. And considering the lack of information online, this has become quite a difficult decision.

Mostly, I get my information from the sales people at these different companies, which of course tends to be biased. And the information I get from different resellers is also biased towards whichever manufacturer they get a larger profit margin on.

As for ink costs, I concluded that it would be more cost effective for me to go for a unit that supports 4 individual cartridges for CMYK and not those tri-color cartridges found in most other HP-driven printers. Thus, advantage, Microboards in this department.

I'm steering away from Primera due to their higher cost proprietary ink catridges. The Microboards' ones, while also proprietary, are less expensive.

The purpose of this purchase is, in fact, for business use. Regardless of which unit I decide to buy, there will be 2 of them to minimize downtime in case of failure. Despite this, I would still like to have a unit that won't need to be repaired every 3 months. I am in Canada, so those 24-hour on-site warranty options are unfortunately, not available to me.

As for MF Digital, while their units seem solid and capable of handling a large workload, I've heard mixed things about the company itself. Apparently, they like to file bankruptcy every 3-4 years and then start fresh under a new name. Thus, voiding whatever warranty was purchased before the bankruptcy. A lot of resellers stopped carrying their products for this very reason.

I cannot find any Canadian resellers on Froogle. And with the unfavorable exchange rate right now, buying from the US is not a viable option. I wish I needed to make this purchase a year ago when our currency was at par!

So in reality, the 2 units I'm leaning mostly towards are the R-Quest and Microboards.

I like R-Quest due to the
- Higher disc holding capacity.
- Relatively fast robotics.
- Stand-alone operation.
- Networking capability.

However, on the downside, their printer uses only 2 cartridges (HP 56 and 57). I imagine this shortens the ink cartridge life considerably. And I'm not sold on the reliability of all these moving parts and robotic arms. It seems they would be costly to repair out of warranty.

The advantage of the Microboards unit, on the other hand...
- Would have a lower ink cost per disc.
- A more reliable, albeit slower robotic system.
- Rapid exchange, overnight replacement warranty option.
- Is about $1200 cheaper per unit.

But, it does not have stand-alone operation nor networking capabilities.

It seems I have merely documented my thoughts here. Perhaps, this post would have been better suited for my blog. :P

Any additional feedback is more than welcome.

Thank You

[sonyman]

RIMAGE DTP 800 Driver

Dear Brandan,
i try agin!
Have you news about the DTP 800 Driver,
how can i use the Machine with the Batchripper?

I hope you have now more Time!


Best Regards
Bastian

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

iWhat,

Yeah, unfortunately there isn't really a good user community forum for CD/DVD duplicator hardware and related applications. The few small ones I have seen have usually been bolted on to a reseller site partly as a pseudo-support forum and partly to drum up business.

If you do post to your blog, send the link this way, I'd like to see the responses.

-brendan

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Regarding the Kodak driver, I've made some updates:

1. A change from 2-second to 10-second pause after insert (to allow for the Teac drive to perform an uninterrupted spinup and recognize discs properly).

2. Tightened up a few bits of timing to shave a few seconds here and there,

3. Added a --pausereject=no/yes option to the script for times where the operator would prefer the unit would stop on rejects, instead of just dropping it into the single output pile. It pauses and beeps every minute with an OK dialog presented. When you press OK, it drops the disc, so you can grab it from the pile. Might be useful if the discs aren't well labeled (e.g. you're ripping CD-Rs for some reason).

I'll be sending the updated archive to spoon so he can put the installer together.

-brendan

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

I've had my Kodak robot running round the clock for about 2 weeks now. I've ripped through most of my collection and had a mostly good experience with the robot.

The few issues I have had:

* It sometimes takes up to 6 minutes to recognize a disk after load. I think there is something wrong with my cd drivers running in Vista. When this occurs, there is almost no cpu resources being used but all cd/dvd drive and hard drive access freeze up until the disk is finally recognized.

* I occasionally load a bad stack of discs, and the robot cannot knock the bottom disc off of the spindle. The "black finger" activates when it should and hits the bottom of the stack, but no disc falls off. This quickly results in 10 failed disc loads and ends the batch. I haven't quite figured out what the problem is when this occurs. Reloading the stack has always solved the problem.

* My cd collection is less than pristine, and I'm getting lots of errors during ripping. I'm not doing any pre rip cleaning, and I'm using the robot to sort through the discs that are in need of buffing. This slows down the process, but who cares... The robot is doing the work. I've ordered a disc buffing tool (aleratec) and will start cleaning and re-ripping the error pile soon.

Overall, great experience. I've been very happy with the robot and the dBpoweramp software. Thanks to everyone on the forum for the help!

Todd,

I haven't seen the long pauses for disc recognition (at least, not after making the 2 second to 10 second post-load sleep change - you made that change, right?). In general, it sounds like a Vista issue to me...assuming you have dbpa configured to disable auto-run, right? BOTH the cd ripper and batch ripper modules have this setting, so check the box to disable it in BOTH.

Regarding the stack issue, I haven't had that problem since I've been using the "hand underneath" method of loading.

The aleratec (black) version of the consumer cleaning device (sold under several names) comes with three pairs of pads: clean (blue), repair(yellow) and buff (pink). In reality, the "buff" is more of a "grind", which is actually necessary before "repair" for deeper scratches. Your discs might look worse after a "buff" + "repair" session, but you're trading lightly scratched circles that don't parallel the read path with smoothing out the edges of those that do or other larger/deeper scratches. Some resellers of this device don't include the pink (buff/grind) pads...I am guessing because people complained that they made more scratches on the surface, but that's the point, it creates systematic scratches when grinding in order to level out the edges around scratches that cause problems.

It's my favorite consumer-level repair package...

-brendan

[bhoar]

Re: RIMAGE DTP 800 Driver

Bastian,

Not yet, sorry. Have to get my DTP 800 unit out of storage.

Were you ever able to test my Roboracer drivers?

-brendan

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Folks - the Kodak driver has been updated. Spoon graciously packaged it up in the installer and posted to the batch-ripper download page.

Changes, generally speaking:

1. Longer sleep after insert+close before returning control to the batch ripper in order to help prevent good discs from failing to be recognized on insert due to interrupted spinups.

2. Some other timing adjustments for slightly increased throughput.

3. A new user controllable flag for the reject command line (in batch ripper configuration) to allow you ask the driver to pause operation whenever a reject is about to be dropped. This may be useful if you have some specialty disc collections (e.g. when the discs aren't well labeled or are so esoteric that metadata matches fail) and it is difficult to determine from the reject list which disc was rejected.

----

I wanted to take care of that before moving on to my next stage of business development.

I'll be transitioning my ulcli-based drivers from "free for dbpoweramp users" to a per device/per drive pay model. Don't fret, driver packages already released will remain free and available for download as long as spoon wishes to host them. In addition, drivers I've already privately promised to work on (via email) will be made available to those I made promises to, when I have the time.

And if you're savvy-enough to script your own based on the current core ulcli in those driver packages, you can do so.

However, future drivers (which will include additional features and compatibility with additional programs) will generally be priced on a per device + per drive model (with some capacity variations). Small robot support will be relatively cheap, larger robot support will be more expensive.

Again, if you're happy with the driver sets currently available, please keep using them and please accept my many thanks for being wonderful beta testers.

-brendan

[IamNemo]

Re: New Kodak driver!!!

Yoohoo!!!!!!!!!!

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

For you kodak owners out there, it is possible to substitute a DVD drive in there.

Received a SAMSUNG SH-S222L today. Like most contemporary drives, it does not eject the tray as far as is required for robot use.

So, for the kodak, it require the following modifications:

1. Remove tray end.
2. Remove face plate.
3. Use nibbler tool to cut top front of metal casing back to allow a disc to move up and down from the tray without intersecting the top casing. The amount of cutting can be checked by powering up the drive, ejecting a tray and placing a disc in the tray. You can draw the cut area in felt pen. It's probably best to cut an additional 1-2mm more than is necessary.
4. Use dremel tool to remove enough of the center sides of the tray to allow the lifter flaps. Note that this tray is apparently a bit wider than the Teac tray (and slightly off-center) so you have to cut further in than you might initially think. Make sure that you round any edges in the outermost track so that it does not snag on eject/close. I had to switch tools from a large sander cylinder (for the bulk "cutting"/melting) to a small polisher to do the rounding and snag removal.

Also, removing the teac drive required:

1. Remove all 16 screws holding the robot insert and drive in place.
2. Remove all four alignment plates and put away for the future if you ever need to put the teac back in. Note that standard microboards units do not use these, they were in there to help with either faster manufacturering (no alignment step necessary) or with knowledge that the retail environment would likely lead to more stress on the equipment.
3. Slide both the robot insert and the drive forward a bit.
4. Use a small flathead screwdriver to loosen and remove the faceplate from the front of the drive housing.
5. Slide both the robot insert and the drive most of the way out of the unit.
6. You should be able to wiggle the drive past the "wards" on each side of the lifters by angling it down while lifting the robot insert up.
7. Disconnect the USB<->IDE bridge controller and power cable from the drive.

The USB cable is hot-glued to the bridge, but mine came loose. You might want to check that on reassembly.

Then you are ready to reverse the procedure with the samsung, sans alignment plates. I eyeballed the alignment, but in the case of this drive, alignment was with the kodak unit pushed in as far as it could go using the original holes and with the drive pushed *out* as far as it could go using the original holes.

Result: a drive that rips slower, on average, than the Teac. But it can also handles DVDs and lightscribe discs with some of my non-dbpoweramp scripts.

Took about an hour and a half to get right. Definitely check that the lifters have the airspace to move with the tray in the standard eject position before sending any robot commands. I did some of the final cutting and snag removal with the drive already installed after noticing I didn't quite have the clearance.

And also a warning: it's quite possible to totally hork the drive tray while doing this, go slow.

-brendan

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Note:

1. I also used the dremel to sand down the four tiny clips inside the disc circle that help to keep the disc loaded if you install the drive vertically. These might interfere with lifting under some circumstances.

2. I repositioned the SH-S222L a couple mm further back. It was out just a tad too much, which meant the lifters weren't quite picking up the disc centered at tray level. Occasionally it would slip off the right lifter. Moving the drive back a bit should remedy this.

Note that the spindle lock also works to center discs as they are lifted and helps keep them centered during the lift. But if the lift starts off off-center to begin with it can slip off the lifter before it even gets up high enough for the spindle lock to keep it centered.

-brendan

[computer-girl]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

After installing dbpoweramp BatchRipper, Batch Converter, CD Ripper, CDWriter (all are registered),
I set up Robot - Kodak Kiosk with the TEAC - CD-W552DA drive on my Quad Core System.
I installed the Kodiak Kiosk autoLoader Drivers and installed the 2303 chipset from Prolific.

Although I can rip from the drive itself when I manually put it into the tray, I am getting no movement from the spindle nor the "wings". The discs will simply not load from the spindle.

Here are the things that I did and the results of those actions:

------------------------------------------------
BATCHRIPPER CONFIGURATION

Selected E: [TEAC - CD-W552DA]


Auto Eject - Manual Load Loader Testing:

Testing: Pre-Batch CLI
Command Line:

Errors From Testing: Error Running Loading Method (might be normal, if loader requires no action)


Testing: Post-Batch CLI
Command Line:

Errors From Testing: Error Running Loading Method (might be normal, if loader requires no action)


-------------------------------------------------------
BATCH RIPPER


After running Batch Ripper & selecting the Kodak Kiosk (TEAC CD-W552DA), I loaded up the spindle with about 10 CDs.
The arrow is pointing directly at the front screw.
I ran BatchRipper.

I then selected E: [TEAC - CD-W552DA] & clicked on the "Rip" button.

Results: The following two messages cycle back and forth
Loading CD
Posting-Load Waiting for CD

I let it go on for about 10 minutes and then gave up.

--------------------

CD RIPPER

Using the Kodak Kiosk (TEAC CD-W552DA), I loaded up the spindle with about 10 CDs.
I then ran dbpoweramp CD Ripper.
I selected E: [TEAC - CD-W552DA]
I manually hit eject on the tray and inserted a CD by hand.


After ripping was completed, the tray ejected automatically and just sat there. The disc was not removed from the tray,

nor did a new CD drop down.

I then received the following results from Batch:
Ripped 1 Discs
All (11) Secure

Then, the following messages cycle back and forth
Loading CD
Posting-Load Waiting for CD

I let it go on for about 10 minutes and then gave up.

--------------------
DEVICE MANAGER

Device Manager for the Kodak Kiosk only
Ports (COM & LPT)
Prolific USB-Serial COmm Port (COM3)
Universal Serial Bus Controllers
Generic USB Hub
USB Mass Storage Device
----------------------

HYPERTERMINAL

I ran Hyperterminal using COM3, 9600, 8N1, and Hardware Flow Control. I then typed "V". The result was "?" in the Hyperterminal window. I then typed "C" and the result was "?" in the Hyperterminal window. I hit return and got yet another "?".

Please advise.

computer-girl

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Auto Eject - Manual Load Loader Testing:

You need to change that from "Auto Eject - Manual Load" to "Kodak Kiosk - 50 disc".

And then set each of the five command lines to the correct com port.

-brendan

[computer-girl]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

When I ran Batch Ripper Configuration, under Configured Drives it listed drive TEAC CD-WD552DA with "Auto Eject - Manual Load" written beside it. I clicked on the Edit button. Under the Loading Method, "Auto Eject - Manual Load" was the only option in the drop down box. Is there some other way I can set it up "to Kodak Kiosk - 50 disc"?

You need to change that from "Auto Eject - Manual Load" to "Kodak Kiosk - 50 disc".

And then set each of the five command lines to the correct com port.

-brendan