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CD Manufacturing Process
First, in a clean room, a glass master is prepared by coating a perfectly flat piece of half inch thick circular glass with a layer of nickel. The nickel is transfered by exciting the nickel to a plasma state whereupon a thin layer of nickel will adhere to the glass. The glass is coated with an emulsion. Source material is encoded into the appropriate format whereupon a computer controlled machine "burns" the pits into the emulsion layer of the glass master. The glass master produced is quality checked before it moves to the next stage.
Stamper Process: Next the glass master is used to create nickel stampers using an electroplating technique. Multiple stampers can be made from one glass master. Each stamper is quality checked. This process is also done in a clean room environment.
Pressing: Each stamper is mounted in an injection moulding machine. Melted polycarbonate resin is injected into the chamber and the CD is pressed using up to 40 tons of pressure. The chamber opens and a robotic arm grabs the disc and transfers it to the next stage. At this point the disc is clear, so a coating of aluminum or gold is applied to the disc for reflectivity. A laquer is spin coated onto the disc and the disc is tranfered to a spindle. The discs are sampled by QC to ensure quality product.
Printing and Packaging: The label is printed onto the disc using a one to six color process (in the case of silk screening), then the printed discs are loaded into a packaging macine that combines a jewel box, tray card, the disc, and booklet. The finished assembly has security stickers applied, and is shrinkwrapped with marketing stickers applied. Sometimes the spindle of 150 discs are shrinkwrapped together in bulk. Bulk packaging can be done before or after printing.
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