Silkscreening CD-Rs?

anonymous amateur silkscreener asks: "Here's a question for those Slashdot readers who fall into the intersection of Photographer / Artists / Computer user. A comment posted in response to the story on Sneaking Open Source Software Through the Front Door led me to this company which makes some cute silk-screened blank CD-Rs. I send out CDs once in a while with photos or (occasionally) my own graphics. Now for a little while, I've been thinking about making some home-screened graphics for them, and I wonder if anyone out there has already done some of the experimentation necessary. I have a silk-screen kit which I have successfully used to make T-shirts and other things (on paper and fabric, that is), but with CDs I'm uncertain about the results."

"I am uncertain for the following reasons:

• Disintegration of the graphic - I'm actually afraid to put the results in a drive, because I'm worried that the pigment will be spun right off the disk and foul the mechanism, and I don't have a dozen replacements sitting around. Is there special pigment I should be using for this? If I spray a sealant on a CD, will the result be too heavy, or too thick, or possibly damage the drive? Yes, I know there are factory-produced screened disks all over the place, but I don't know if they're doing anything special to protect / seal their graphics. They seem to have a nice smooth surface, and I've never seen one to separate graphics from disk from wear or anything.
• Balance: If I screen on an asymmetric design, will I unbalance the disk too much? I suppose not, because there are those wacky shaped CDs, too.

Note, this is not for mass production; this is for sending small runs of decorated CDs to friends and family, as holiday gifts and so forth. If I were making 1000 of them, I'm sure it would be easier to have them mass produced. This is more about hobby / craft / homemade appeal. Like homemade holiday cards -- more personal than Hallmark, or for that matter than a sharpie-scrawled CD-R that says "snapshots" under a brand name.

More generally, can anyone point to their own successes / failures / HOWTOs on creative CD embellishment? (and packaging for that matter!) I'd like to avoid the expensive 'buy our special CD-sized stickers' approach if possible, but there are probably things I've overlooking.

No Batik, please."

Beware

[Anonymous Coward]

Those "wacky shaped CDs" still have their center of weight in the center of the mounting hole. If you're going to apply an asymetric design, you should either make sure that the weight of the paint is negligible or that the paint is distributed in a way as to keep the center of weight near the center of the disc.

Call a screenprinter shop

[linzeal]

Ask for water-based inks as you pry know plastitol needs to be baked for the oil to cure. However it is all in the pigments go expensive you are not covering a lot of surface area. Ink is not going anywhere if the water is gone. Look at a peice of coated paper that you have printed on, see how it sits on top of the paper? Cut through the paper and ink and look at the cross section the ink should never go through the paper unless it has a super high water content.

Have you ever silked a large batch of anything though? The only thing that can be said about it is that it can you put you in a state of zen, it is not easy work.

Re:Call a screenprinter shop

[pisdtal]

Define large batch.
I have mass produced several different projects t-shirts and posters mainly. And I agree it isnt easy work, but I dont know if I would go so far as to say it was Zen like.
Maybe I just didnt have enough poke enough smot.

Re:Call a screenprinter shop

[linzeal]

6,000 double sided T-Shirts 3 ink, red, white, and black. That is the largest I've ever done. 5 days, I was up 3 of them on pure coffee, cigarettes, and Dandy Warhols/Kraftwerk. On the second day around 4:00am some crackwhore was murdered by someone 10 feet from our back door which was open with a security door. Guy got knifed in the head and ran over and I did not notice until the police came and the flashing lights broke me out of the trance. Thing is we only got paid for 3,000 or so the rest we tried to sell but the art was so outrageously crappy that we eventually gave them to the St vincent De paul and we saw crackwhores wearing them for months afterwards.

Re:Not silkscreening, but what about this hack?

[penguinboy]

What sort of heat transfer process? The only one I've seen for t-shirts involves an iron, and I can't imagine that that would be very compatible with a plastic CD-R.

I know it's not silkscreen

[TheTomcat]

but have you tried labels?

I have one of these [cdstomper.com] and the results are decent, even with my cheapish inkjet printer.

I've had stomps printed with a colour laser (at 300dpi) with great success. There's also a clear/glossy version that works very well, and looks great.

Re:I know it's not silkscreen

[galaxy300]

I have to agree -- I've used the glossy ones with a high dpi inkjet and the results were amazing.

Re:Read the post!

[TheTomcat]

if possible...

Just relaying my opinion. that IS what the poster was looking for, after all.

Plus, they're not that expensive. You can pick them up at Staples / Business Depot in bulk.

S

You're worrying too much

[eggstasy]

I'm not an expert but I think you're worrying too much. How could such small particles like pigments be damaging to your hardware if common dust is getting in it all the time?
I have one hell of a dusty house and my aging 2X cdrom works as good as my brand new CDRW. Plus I have opened it several times in the past. There were actual dog hairs in there, hehehe.
Also, the weight of the CD should not be that much of a problem. I have successfully used homemade CD-sized stickers which were rather thick, and had no trouble at all.
On top of all that, well, is there anything cheaper than a CD-ROM drive, if by means of some mysterious planetary alignment you manage to break something?

Wacky shaped CDs?

[barzok]

Not really. They may look to be "off" at first glance, but they're actually balanced around the center.

I put up a web page on my CD silkscreen adventures

[ahfoo]

In itself it's not directly addressing your issues, but it's definitely about one dude's adventure in trying to silkscreen CDs from scratch and I have pics.
Although I'm still waiting to get some of the chemicals to get my emulsion formula right, ie chromium tartrate, I painted silver CDRs (uncoated twenty cents a piece) with acrylic and had no problems with either damaging the CDs or drives.
Check the page [toefl.ath.cx] if you want to see a down and dirty DIY effort.
There's also this earlier Slashdot [slashdot.org] thread that was supposed to be on automating CDR duplication but went into various other aspects of the job as well such as silkscreening and some debates about media pricing.

Re:I put up a web page on my CD silkscreen adventu

[ahfoo]

It would be my pleasure.
The first page there you have me making silkscreening frames that are suited for CDs. The frames you buy at silkscreen shops are usually square and made for T-shirts. So, that's where I cut my thumb.
The next shot is the pivotal step where you use a bright light to expose the emulsion and devlop it by placing a transparency that was printed on an ink jet over the pattern.
Finally, you see the finished product.
The next page is just talking about various formulas for emulsions ans showing pictures of emulsions settting up. If you're not a big chemistry fan, I'd recommend just buying a product called Liquid Light which I hear comes with instructions and you can also google it to find lots of T-shirt instructions.
My own technique was to purchase silver nitrate salts and experiment with different substrates and activators but it was partly for educational purposes that I went this route. If you just want the CDs done and done quickly then I'd recommend just buying a pre-mixed batch of emulsions.
When I do finally get all the details on the chemistry worked out so I can take someone from metallic silver to hardy silkscreen emulsion, I'll be sure to share with anyone interested.
In the mean time, you can also use a stamp technique and a few stickers with reflective backgrounds to get a pretty cool looking CD that you can kick out by the thousands at low cost.

printable cds

[BicPenTrach]

i have published some limited runs of indie music albums on printable cds (which have a matte silver finish and are meant for specialized laser / inkjet printers with cd tray feeding mechanisms) using:

(1) customized rubber stamps with regular inkpad ink -- these can be ordered online by submitting a graphic file for as little as $10 for a 5" by 5" stamp

(2) layered bicolor woodcuts with substantially heavier pigments -- these were a bit messy, but after the initial loose bits came off after drying, all seemed fine

i think you should be concerned about loose pigment as it must be more abrasive than dust. the sealant route, imho, is ill-advised, most i inspected contained serious solvents, which (again i presume) could harm the cd. if you must cover up the ink, a clear label might be better, but i realize you don't want labels, plus they are generally more expensive than the cd.

i have published roughly 600+ using the rubber stamps and 300+ using the woodcuts and so far the only complaints have been about the music ;) of course, this may be limiting play...

weight balance

[NevarMore]

Im not taking a stance on whether or not the inking will upset the balance.

In the event that it does, would a clear coat of paint/acrylic that has the same density as the ink smoothed flat over the printing work? Think of using putty to fill in a bumpy piece of wood, or filling in potholes. The clear cote should fill in the low spots where there is less ink (lower weight areas) and not stick to the high spots.

Nifty Idea

[jubbsy]

I like the idea, but i'd be worried about it wrecking my drive too. Also, if a burn stuffs up, thats a nice looking CD you gotta throw away! ;)