Printing on Thermal disks

[jackdup]

Has anyone found a way to succesfully print on thermal disks with an inkjet printer? A store had a special and the flyer said inkjet printable disks so bought a 50 pack. When I opened them I noticed they were glossy but tried printing on one with my Epson inkjet and of course afterwards you could wipe the ink right off. I took them back and showed them in the ad where they said inkjet printable and in the fine print on the label where it said thermal print but they didn't understand the difference and as far as they were concerned they were printable disks and that is all that mattered.

I would like to find a way to use these disks and just wondered if someone has found a way to succesfully print on them without the ink just wiping off or smearing.

Thank you

[Trippedout]

sounds like they could be Lightscribe Discs the ones i used where gold in color I gave my old asus lightscribe drive away by mistake gave someone my old case without checking what drive was in it sheesh I mean to buy another when ive got the cash its a fun way of printing discs but not quick by no means think that what you bought but could be wrong.

[jackdup]

No they are not lightscribe disks, wish they were. They have a white surface just like inkjet but it is very glossy, and the disk label says for thermal printers. I wouldn't mind having a thermal printer but given the cost couldn't justify buying one.

[jman98]

Take a picture of the container for the discs with as much of the label as you can show us. Also take a picture of the top side of one of the discs. Post both. We can probably tell from that what you've really got.

Inkjet is NOT the same as thermal print. They use completely different and incompatible technologies. Thermal print is far less useful being mostly restricted to text whereas you could actually print designs using inkjet printable discs like custom labels.

[jman98]

For what it's worth, I was an early adopter of Lightscrbe due to cost (at the time inkjet printers for discs were about $300) and I am completely against it now and have been for some years now. I store my discs away from direct sunlight and in temperature controlled conditions and many of them are fading to the point that in another year or two they will be completely unreadable. Add to this the fact that all 3 of the burners I used for Lightscribe burning developed fatal problems a lot sooner than the manufacturers claimed they would and Lightscribe is just an expensive and time consuming way to produce low quality labels. It's not worth it. You are missing nothing.

[aedipuss]

you can still buy cheap thermal printers. better to toss the discs and write it off i would think though.
http://www.tamayatech.com/parts.php?g=CWE60

[jackdup]

Take a picture of the container for the discs with as much of the label as you can show us. Also take a picture of the top side of one of the discs. Post both. We can probably tell from that what you've really got.

Inkjet is NOT the same as thermal print. They use completely different and incompatible technologies. Thermal print is far less useful being mostly restricted to text whereas you could actually print designs using inkjet printable discs like custom labels.

I am well aware that thermal and inkjet are completely different printing technologies. A lot of what I do is text and I can buy these disks for $6.88 for 50 but they aren't much use if I can't print on them. The store won't take them back even though their ad clearly said inkjet printable disks, and the label on the disks clearly says thermal, to them printable is printable. I should have paid more attention when buying them but frankly have never seem thermal printable disks in stores, only online, and as they were advertised as inkjet printable just assumed they were. I just thought perhaps someone had found a way to be able to print on them without being able to wipe the ink off the next day. Attached is a picture of the label and top of the disk.

[Trippedout]

jman98 I know what you mean but I used the the darker print update thingy on there site and came out a deep black and grey and are still fine but the same can be Sade about cd in general they degrade over time to its a known fact thats why I keep everything on a 2tb drive I had a friend show up and ask for a copy of cd he purchased a few years back when heard the one I had his is now unplayable and he is very careful all organized storage cabinet and stuff he said he didn't understand what happen to it when I told him it was a scientific fact he looked shocked cause he has a very large collection anyone want to buy some 78rpms lol

[jman98]

Jackdup - Thanks for posting those pictures. Yeah, you do have what you think you do. However, I had not seen any white label thermal discs, so it was interesting to see what they look like. You can write on them with a sharpie. However, you should also be aware that TDK discs are CRAP! They use only the bottom quality cheap manufacturers. If you must use them, burn them no faster than 4x unless you're willing to live with the chance of making coasters. The ONLY consistently high quality media for DVDs is Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim (anything except their Life series which is their "cheap crap" line to compete costwise with everyone else's cheap crap).

Trippedout - Yeah, I used the update. Still didn't make most of my burns dark enough. Well, no media is guaranteed to last forever. However, there was a known problem back in the 1990s where a small number of specific CD pressing plants that were used mostly by small European labels had some defective materials in their pressings and those discs become "bronzed". Otherwise properly cared for CDs should still be good. I've got some from the mid 1980s I can still play without issues, but I do have one very heavily played CD from the 1990s that I have some issues with on some players, but I've scratched it up a bit and I think that's the main problem.

[Cornucopia]

jackdup,

Take them back to the store and say "even though they say 'Printable', they do NOT print!"...Then they'll try to explain you are doing something wrong, so you tell them to try it themselves (with you watching). Then, my guess is they'll get out their inkjet printer and try to print, and it'll SMEEE-AA-RR all over the disc. Then you'll get your money back (without giving away the fact that they used the wrong printer type).

Scott

[solarfox]

To get back to the OP's original question...

No, there is no magic trick to allow you to print on those discs via inkjet. In order to be inkjet-printable, the discs have to have a layer of ink-permeable material on the top surface, which is similar to the coating on glossy photo paper. Thermal-printable discs completely lack any such ink-permeable coating; the top layer is just plain polycarbonate, which is very definitely not permeable to liquids.

Generally, all "thermal printable" means is that the top disc surface is devoid of any logos or manufacturers' graphics, so as not to interfere with any text or graphics you want to put on it yourself. Strictly speaking, any non-inkjet disc can be put in a thermal printer, as long as you don't mind printing on top of whatever logos or labeling was already pre-embossed on the disc's polycarbonate surface at the factory.

I like Cornucopia's suggestion the best. Take them back and make them try printing on the discs themselves -- although for less than $7, it might not be worth the trouble.

[turk690]

Has anyone found a way to succesfully print on thermal disks with an inkjet printer? A store had a special and the flyer said inkjet printable disks so bought a 50 pack. When I opened them I noticed they were glossy but tried printing on one with my Epson inkjet and of course afterwards you could wipe the ink right off. I took them back and showed them in the ad where they said inkjet printable and in the fine print on the label where it said thermal print but they didn't understand the difference and as far as they were concerned they were printable disks and that is all that mattered.

I would like to find a way to use these disks and just wondered if someone has found a way to succesfully print on them without the ink just wiping off or smearing.

Thank you

Eons ago I bought and used for quite sometime a Casio CW-100 thermal printer. This was because I noticed most CD-Rs and DVD-Rs had a blank area and indeed the ribbon used for this printer printed smack on this area. The 'thermal' in this printer is the head heating up parts of the ribbon and leaving the ink permanently on the CD/DVD. You can use text and graphics, limited only ultimately by the ribbon width and travel. But the ribbons became harder & harder to find where I was so I graduated to inkjet. For inkjet IMHO the best are JVC (TY) glossy printable DVD-R.
It's interesting that these TDKs have a completely blank slate to print on. I suppose with a little imagination, and using red, green, blue, black, gold, silver ribbons and running the wretched disc over and over through one could print some crazy stuff. Back then (circa 2004) the manufacturer logo was on the top part and other stuff around, with only a blank space enough for the CW-100 to print on.