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Most cost effective disc printing method?

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Hey, I want to print up professional looking despecialized blu-ray sets as Christmas gifts for my friends and family.

My only problem is the disc printing.

I want them to look professional so I don’t want to use stickers but I also don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars for a disc printer I’m only going to use a few times.

So what would be the most cost effective solution to my problem?

Author
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I had the same thoughts. I found the current Canon Pixma series of printers that will print on discs to be the best solution.

I bought a Pixma MX922 multifunction for about $80 from Amazon along with a set of four full replacement ink cartridges (3rd party) for another ~$20.

For $100 I got a printer that has been excellent for printing both the discs themselves and - when using the right photo paper - the blu-ray case inserts and graphics/pages to cover my home made slipcase boxes.

I just finished last night with the production of 5 full sets of discs… with lots of experimentation over the last couple of months, and several attempts that required me to throw away printed materials I am just barely into the second replacement set of ink, so I would say my total out-of-pocket for the printer and ink is only about $90.

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wombat_94 said:

I had the same thoughts. I found the current Canon Pixma series of printers that will print on discs to be the best solution.

I bought a Pixma MX922 multifunction for about $80 from Amazon along with a set of four full replacement ink cartridges (3rd party) for another ~$20.

For $100 I got a printer that has been excellent for printing both the discs themselves and - when using the right photo paper - the blu-ray case inserts and graphics/pages to cover my home made slipcase boxes.

I just finished last night with the production of 5 full sets of discs… with lots of experimentation over the last couple of months, and several attempts that required me to throw away printed materials I am just barely into the second replacement set of ink, so I would say my total out-of-pocket for the printer and ink is only about $90.

Can I see some pics of your disc sets?

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LordRorek said:

Can I see some pics of your disc sets?

I plan to post them in the next day or two… I’ll let you know when I have them up.

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Did you have templates for the discs? Or do you have to align the image with disc correctly? I have looked into buying one of these printers. And any info is a great help.

wombat_94 said:

I had the same thoughts. I found the current Canon Pixma series of printers that will print on discs to be the best solution.

I bought a Pixma MX922 multifunction for about $80 from Amazon along with a set of four full replacement ink cartridges (3rd party) for another ~$20.

For $100 I got a printer that has been excellent for printing both the discs themselves and - when using the right photo paper - the blu-ray case inserts and graphics/pages to cover my home made slipcase boxes.

I just finished last night with the production of 5 full sets of discs… with lots of experimentation over the last couple of months, and several attempts that required me to throw away printed materials I am just barely into the second replacement set of ink, so I would say my total out-of-pocket for the printer and ink is only about $90.

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Okay… I went ahead and uploaded photos of my completed sets… here are a few images:

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 (Edited)

Tyler0013 said:

Did you have templates for the discs? Or do you have to align the image with disc correctly? I have looked into buying one of these printers. And any info is a great help.

I used stealthboy’s Criterion set source files as the basis for my set… I’d say my set was 90 percent untouched from his files that he shared.

I tweaked the wording of a few things, updated the box artwork to add a starfield instead of plain black background on the top/bottom/spine, but otherwise I left it alone. His set is ready to go and is a beautiful presentation of NJVC’s blu-rays and you really don’t have to touch what he did at all if you just want to create the same set as he ended up sharing.

As for alignment when printing discs… I did end up using exported graphics from Gimp for the disc labels themselves and laid them out with the utility that comes with the Canon printer itself. It handled the alignment without flaws. If I had felt like it, I’m sure I could have found the right settings to print on the disc from the Preview app (I’m on a Mac) with just using the exported graphics, but since I had the utility from Canon I just went with that anyway.

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Perfect! Thank you so much for the reply! Your sets look great

wombat_94 said:

Tyler0013 said:

Did you have templates for the discs? Or do you have to align the image with disc correctly? I have looked into buying one of these printers. And any info is a great help.

I used stealthboy’s Criterion set source files as the basis for my set… I’d say my set was 90 percent untouched from his files that he shared.

I tweaked the wording of a few things, updated the box artwork to add a starfield instead of plain black background on the top/bottom/spine, but otherwise I left it alone. His set is ready to go and is a beautiful presentation of NJVC’s blu-rays and you really don’t have to touch what he did at all if you just want to create the same set as he ended up sharing.

As for alignment when printing discs… I did end up using exported graphics from Gimp for the disc labels themselves and laid them out with the utility that comes with the Canon printer itself. It handled the alignment without flaws. If I had felt like it, I’m sure I could have found the right settings to print on the disc from the Preview app (I’m on a Mac) with just using the exported graphics, but since I had the utility from Canon I just went with that anyway.

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Any chance I could get the files you ultimately used for the discs and covers?

wombat_94 said:

Okay… I went ahead and uploaded photos of my completed sets… here are a few images:

boxset
boxset
boxset
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