News

Inside Sony’s Blu-ray factory

By Michael

For those that haven’t already come across the photos from News.com.au that take you inside Sony’s Blu-ray factory, check them out below (click to enlarge).

Rounds to flats ... each Blu-ray disc begins its life as a collection of small polycarbonate granules delivered to the factory by truck and stored in a silo / Charlie Brewer Clean room ... to reduce contamination, technicians must enter the production room through a chamber that blasts loose dust off their bodies with air jets / Charlie Brewer
Go with the flow ... the polycarbonate granules are piped around the factory until they arrive in this hopper above the moulding machine that measures them out evenly / Charlie Brewer Under pressure ... the mould compresses the melted plastic into a disc and creates the first layer of data. Then the disc is removed by a robotic arm for the next step / Charlie Brewer
Photobucket Toward the light ... the sputtered disc is then coated in a layer of UV resin and cured with light, before moving on to have the second layer of data embedded / Charlie Brewer

Under observation ... Sony Digital Audio Disc Company (DADC) technicians monitor of the of three Blu-ray machines. In full production, each machine can make up to 16,000 discs a day / Charlie Brewer Hard layer ... finally, the disc is given another coating of UV resin and a final protective layer before being checked for any tiny bubbles between layers by this machine / Charlie Brewer
Runtime ... the final stage of the production process is to check the data integrity of each disc through playback and scanning / Charlie Brewer All made up ... the discs, having been checked for errors, are then loaded into the printer that will add the artwork to their surface / Charlie Brewer
Master plates ... the artwork for every disc printed at the Sony plant is stored in this rack, ready to be loaded into the printer for another run / Charlie Brewer Silkscreen-style ... the artwork is broken down into black, cyan, magenta and yellow layers that are applied separately, building up to the final image which is blasted with ultra-bright light to set the ink / Charlie Brewer

Insert here ... the finished discs are then taken to the assembly packing line where they are matched with a plastic case, cover and any inserts / Charlie Brewer Flip and close ... the assembly packing line places the disc and insert into the box. At full production the machine can package 4500 Blu-ray discs per hour / Charlie Brewer
Time to hang up the boots ... from the factory in Huntingwood, the discs start going out to retail stores all over Australia. About two thirds of them are films and the rest games / Charlie Brewer

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