Although all media are standardized in size and structure, marginal differences within the specifications are decisive for a smooth production process or not ...
Anyone working with Rimage production systems or the Epson Discproducer knows how grueling permanent manual intervention can be when media has to be produced under deadline pressure. The reasons for this are as varied as there are media providers on the market, but the problems can easily be avoided by choosing the right media. In general, problems can be distinguished between transport, recording and printing.
Transport problems due to improper processing of the media
Transport problems arise if media have not been carefully produced. Robotics can only work if the media can be perfectly gripped, transported and placed in recorders or printers for processing. If the media is too thin because the manufacturer wants to save polycabonate (extracted from petroleum) or if he processes the media too quickly or improperly so that they stick together or curl because the print surface has not had enough time to dry, the robotics cannot work properly and stops with error messages.
Recording problems that can lead to reading problems
Writing or recording problems are a wide field. Errors that used to immediately stop the writing process are forgiven by today's recorders and writing programs, suspend the writing process and continue elsewhere. Although the medium is then output as successfully written, it is almost certain that this will lead to reading problems in various CD or DVD drives, which will increase even further as the medium ages.
Printing problems
Printing problems are a difficult topic, because here the perception of the problem is rather subjective. If you print only three lines of text, the only thing that will bother you is that they take too long to dry, but otherwise have a problem with almost no manufacturer. However, if you make demands on the printing so that the color of the logo also corresponds to the CI, then this will fail due to the media of many suppliers.
With more than 10,000 production systems sold, our colleagues in support know almost every conceivable source of error. Based on this wealth of experience, we select the media that will find their way into our product range. It is important here that the manufacturer can guarantee consistent quality and, in case of doubt, also takes the media back if they cannot be processed with the production systems.
In general, a distinction should be made between media for data distribution (distribution), which are no longer needed after a single reading, and archive media, which preserve the data for 10, 35 or more years. For all media distributed by INCOM we can show appropriate durability certificates. Currently we recommend media from Rimage, Ritek, and FTI (Falcon). Rimage now has its media, which is also branded as Rimage, produced on dedicated production lines and offers a comprehensive functional guarantee.