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Homemade Robotic Arms for CD Duplication?
LA Kings Fan writes "I have this current gig of a job which requires me to make numerous copies of CDRs (in the thousands). Since it would be ludicrous to sit in front of my computer to remove a burned CD and put a fresh one in everytime, I've looked around for better, more sensible solutions. There are two alternatives: CD Duplication Towers and Automated Duplicators. They both have their advantages but are very costly. The cool thing about the automated duplicators is that the burning process is automated by the use of a robotic arm which replaces the burned CD with a fresh one. This is neat, so I was wondering if anyone has attempted to take this concept a step further by essentially building their own robotic arm for their burner on their personal computer. Is this feasible? Can a robotic arm like this be created from off the shelf parts? I'm clueless when it comes to this engineering stuff, so any help would be appreciated."
Someone built an Amazing Lego DAT Tape Changer out of Mindstorms. I imagine the same could be done for a CDR changer. Here's your excuse to go buy yourself a cool toy!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
how to expect to build it. i don't want to come off mean though. just wanted to bring up that point.
hire a college intern, tell them they will be working with multimedia on a daily basis and have them burn CDs all day. it might be cheaper than a robot and the intern is more mobile.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
there are changers ('hifi' jukeboxes) from sony etc. for a few hundred bucks. one day it occured to me that a modded 400-way changer would kick ass. 400 asses.
say one could marry the cd changing mechanics with an off-the-shelf cd writer. serious hack indeed, but perhaps doable. has anyone disassembled such a changer already?
this would rock.
--dzsino
--dzsino
I'm putting out a cd by a friends band. I'm getting it done professionally on silver-backed CD-r (it's a cd-r, but looks just like a CD). I decided to go for cd-r because I'm only doing 500.
At 500 quantity, Furnace CD (furnacecd.com) will do them for $0.89 each. Less than $500 bucks! That's a hell of a lot cheaper than me trying to build some crazy machine with a conveyor belt. Best thing is, I can give them my master on CD-R and get my CDs in less than a week (3 day turnaround).
Now, if I was getting more done, it would make sense to get them done as pressed CDs. I don't know the price break down for those, but they said that it becomes cost effective to do that at around 1,000 copies, because there are up front fees they make you pay for setting up the pressing machines.
Get them done somewhere, don't waste time trying to "engineer" some solution with rubber bands and legos...