How Compact DVDs Are Made

We all use compact disks in our daily grind of life on the Internet and other computer systems such as the PS3, Xbox and more, but do we actually know how DVD’s are made? Let’s take a look and break it down into simple steps!

The Mould

All DVD’s that are mass produced are from a master disk made out of glass. A machine first places a chemical over the glass to perfectly clean it up, this is called deionized water using a small goat hair brush, because goats hair is very fine and perfect for brushing away any fragments that are on the glass. The stuff is removed by the rapid rotation of the machine, after this it goes into another machine where a laser inspects the piece of glass for any marks or anomalies.

After the inspection is completed two chemicals are applied, a primer and a photo resistant coating at a temperature of 21 degrees and lasts 3 minutes.

The Oven And The Data

The photoresistance coating is then dried in an oven for up to 30 minutes, it then has another machine which has two spouts and they apply deionized water and a data solution which copies the data to the DVD, we then place it into yet another machine which puts on the nickel coating we see at the blue, green and silver coating, depending on the DVD you bought and which make.

The Shape

It is left for 70 minutes until all of the solutions dry perfectly to the disk. We then send it off to a cutting factory to be stamped out into the iconic circular shape we all see today, the off cuts are sent back to the company for recycling, we all like to be green right?

The Master

The master is taken out of the machine in its circular shape and the film is peeled back to reveal the data and then it is checked by a technician. They then send it off to the pressing department where the disk is put into the main machine that mass produces the DVD’s, and there we have it folks! One master DVD disk producing millions upon million each and every single year!

Bio: DVD’s have come a long way over the past few years and they go up to nearly 10GB of storage space which is amazing seeing as though just 10 years ago we were using floppy disks at 200MB, though for storage these days we use data centres such as ShareFile by Citrix.