old cds

[Scott Woodson]

I recently called EPILOG tech support to ask the same question about cutting CD's and the tech advised me not to do it. Not sure why, just ended the conversation at that. According to this thread some of you have done it. Can you post a pic of the result.

Scott

[Dan Hintz]

To add to Doug's... make sure you engrave the correct side

[Richard Rumancik]

Like Scott, I'm a little skeptical that CDs can be laser cut successfully - Joe, Dan, are you sure they can be cut? I don't have my sample box handy but my recollection is that it did not cut well at all for me. They are generally polycarbonate, and PC does not cut without a lot of carbonization. PC generally will not engrave well either. I can't remember trying any marking myself. But I suppose if it is coated and you just affect the coating rather than penetrate the PC surface then maybe you could achieve a contrasting mark. Maybe.

I recall reading about someone marking a LightScribe CD using a co2 laser rather than using a CD burner - but I don't know where I saw that so I can't be sure.

[Lee DeRaud]

I recall reading about someone marking a LightScribe CD using a co2 laser rather than using a CD burner - but I don't know where I saw that so I can't be sure.

I played around with that a couple of times, no joy. The main problem is, the coating is designed to be marked by a 5 milliwatt laser: that's 0.02% of the power of my 25W machine. Suffice it to say, if the laser fires at all, it blows right through the coating and the dye, leaving a clear hole...an interesting enough artistic effect, but not terribly conducive to use of the disc for storing bits.