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Conference cookie::notes$archive:cd_v1

Title:	Welcome to the CD Notes Conference
Notice:	Welcome to COOKIE
Moderator:	COOKIE::ROLLOW

Created:	Mon Feb 17 1986
Last Modified:	Fri Mar 03 1989
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1517
Total number of notes:	13349

833.0. "A Giant Leap Backward ?" by ESKIMO::TBROWNELL () Wed Jul 29 1987 18:05

    
    In the Arts and Leisure section of this past Sunday's New York Times,
  (July 26th) the is an article on why CD prices continue to be so high
  with all the new production plants coming on-line. In this vein, some
  people in West Germany have developed a mechanical system for producing
  the pits that supposedly can offer sound quality equal to those written
  with the laser system. The advantage is the price, the mechanical
  system cost is about that one third of a laser tool. Questions about whether
  the machine can punch holes at the necesssary rate and whether the
  reliabilty of the machine will be good are being asked at present.
  I believe the acronym for the technology is DMM.

   Tb

T.R Title User Personal
Name Date Lines

833.1 WONDER::OUELLETTE VAXing Nostalgic Wed Jul 29 1987 19:23 21

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
833.1		WONDER::OUELLETTE	VAXing Nostalgic	`Wed Jul 29 1987 19:23`	21
	DMM is short for Direct to Metal Master. The technique was orriginally developed for records. Rather than etching a wax disk, then coating that with graphite and electroplating that to make a master stamper, they use a diamond bit to scrape a copper blank. It cuts production costs (since you don't have to do the tricky graphite or electroplating steps). It also makes better stampers. About a third of the records made in the world now use this process (I wouldn't mind having the pattent on that process). Those cleve Germans have now been able to make this process work for CDs. It is much cheeper than the conventional photo resist and acid etch method of creating glass masters. The stampers haven't yet been shown to differ in quality from those made the old way. The economy of this method is due to not needing a VLSI grade clean room to make the masters in. This technology is also supposed to make it possible for smaller firms to get into CD production -- the capital requirements are much smaller. R.

DMM is short for Direct to Metal Master.  The technique
was orriginally developed for records.  Rather than etching
a wax disk, then coating that with graphite and electroplating
that to make a master stamper, they use a diamond bit to scrape
a copper blank.  It cuts production costs (since you don't have
to do the tricky graphite or electroplating steps).  It also
makes better stampers.  About a third of the records made
in the world now use this process (I wouldn't mind having
the pattent on that process).

Those cleve Germans have now been able to make this process
work for CDs.  It is much cheeper than the conventional
photo resist and acid etch method of creating glass masters.
The stampers haven't yet been shown to differ in quality
from those made the old way.  The economy of this method
is due to not needing a VLSI grade clean room to make the
masters in.  This technology is also supposed to make it
possible for smaller firms to get into CD production --
the capital requirements are much smaller.

R.