These CDs may be used for promotional pieces for business, music or many other uses. They can even get stuck in these players or be rejected if the tray-loading mechanism has optical sensors to detect the disc position.īusiness card CDs or shaped CDs can hold any type of data and can usually store anywhere from 40MB to 100MB of information.
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They work with most machines where the disc is inserted by manually clipping it onto a spindle (the mechanism in virtually all portable CD players), but may not work in drives that load the disc from a tray and they are not compatible with any slot-loading drives. Shaped CDs are not compatible with all CD players. They appear silver and reflective on the data side of the CD, even though they contain no actual valid bytes and cannot be read. Other parts of the shape are purely decorative - but are still often finished to the same appearance as a CD. Second, at least three points of the outer edge must touch either the outer 12 cm diameter rim of the player's tray where standard size discs fit or the inner rim where 8 cm diameter mini discs fit.ĭata can only be recorded on sections of a Shaped CD that form uninterrupted circular tracks. First, the shape must be balanced to avoid problems when it begins to spin. It is important that two criteria be met for a shaped disk to function properly.
It will not work for CD-R because the plastic used to produce CD-R tends to splinter when cut. The second method to produce a shaped CD or DVD is to produce a normal CD-ROM or DVD-ROM and cut it to the desired shape.
Recordable CDs and DVDs (CD-R or DVD-R or DVD+R) are not generally available except in standard shapes including rectangular. For the same reason, this is generally restricted to the production of read-only CDs and DVDs (CD-ROM or DVD-ROM). Because of the initial cost involved in setting up this process, it is usually used for mass production. A special mold can be made and used to "stamp" CDs (or DVDs) as part of the precision injection molding process that is used to make CDs and DVDs. Shaped CDs are produced in one of two ways. A logo can be printed on a shaped CD, in the same way common audio CDs and CD-ROMs are labeled. Unlike Mini CDs, which are smaller, but still circular versions of normal CDs, custom CDs can be any number of shapes, even more complicated shapes like gears with dozens of teeth, but are generally smooth and with rounded edges, such as ovals or rounded rectangles. There are many companies that sell CDs with custom shapes. These disks are usually made for marketing purposes and are properly read by most CD-ROM drives (and audio CD players, although custom-shaped CDs tend to contain less data). Examples include business card CDs, CDs in the shape of a star, a map of a country, interview material and more.
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It is easy to distinguish that the data track of the disc is smaller compared to a full 72-minute disc it ends before it reaches the outside border of the disc to allow the unused media on the outside to be cut away.Ī shaped compact disc is a non-circular compact disc. This CD was produced as a round disc and automatically cut to shape using a computer-aided machine with a rotary tool.