Product Description

Introduction

In the optical disc industry, screen printing is used to apply the graphics to the top-side of the polycarbonate optical disc. In most cases, the companies that screen print discs are also disc manufacturers who master and replicate the media. The majority of these companies will also package the discs and perform the CD/DVD fulfillment.

Screen Printing Process

Optical discs are screen printed using UV inks which allow for extremely fast production cycle times. Commonly, optical discs are screen printed with an initial white base-coat (even when the final printing is not performed using screen printing methods), and decorated with opaque spot color inks or semi-transparent process color inks.

Optical disc screens are stretched with stable, high-tension yellow polyester screen printing fabrics.

Screen Printing Process

Optical discs are screen printed using UV inks which allow for extremely fast production cycle times. Commonly, optical discs are screen printed with an initial white base-coat (even when the final printing is not performed using screen printing methods), and decorated with opaque spot color inks or semi-transparent process color inks.

When optical disc printing first began, the printing process was inline with the disc replication. Today, nearly all disc printing is performed on offline printing machines because one printing machine can support multiple replication lines.

Typical screen printing machines are set up in a circular fashion (the optical discs are loaded and unloaded in virtually the same place), and have between 4 – 6 printing stations. A UV dryer follows each print cycle in order to cure the ink before the next color is printed.