HANGEBI.COM

Lightscribe has several great disadvantages, such as slow printing speed, bad contrast, dull colors, but it is much more handy, than having separate printer for just cd labeling, dealing with ink, cartridges, stick on labels and so on.

During my extensive lightscribe usage, I managed to tweak discs to achieve better (and interesting, too) results:

1. Making disc more glossy and brighter. I used Johnson’s baby oil for this task. spilled several droplets of it, on printed side of disc, wiped it all along the disc surface, then cleaned it dry, using dry towel. This gives much better surface feeling, and also makes disc 10-15% lighter. You need to very troughfully wipe disc dry, because if not, dirt will stick on it.

2. Add new colors to disc. I discovered this “feature” when I accidentially dropped a bit of pork fat onto lightscribe disc, and left it there for couple of days. When I wipe it off, I discovered that black color has gone, revealing bright yellow surface behind it (much more bright and light reflecting than lightscribe disc itself. If you remembered older, gold plated Kodak CD’s, this is nearly the same result). I continued tweaking in this direction, and discovered the following things:

• The more often you overprinted same place of disc, more easily is to remove black color from it. For example, if first printing, done at medium contrast, needs 2-3 weeks for black color to wanish, using the pig fat, if you overprinted same place at disc 3-4 times at maximum contrast, you’ll need just couple of hours to make black color lost
• As I can guess, black color coating somehow reacts to fatty acids, contained in pig fat. I haven’t experimented with other fatty acids, since this gives me satisfactory results, but you can try any other solvents (I already tried household detergents – no result)

so to have 3 color discs (general disc color, bright and shiny disc color, black color) you need to do the following:

• Overprint disc areas you want to make brighter, several times.
• Process them with pig fat (put on it, leave for 2-3 hours, then gently wipe off)
• Go and wash disc with generic household dishwashing liquid.

You’ll have nice and shiny discs.

Unfortunately, I don’t have camera now (mine was broken during seaside rest). As I’ll get it, I’ll update this post with photos of sample discs.