Things people will do to get rid of scratches.

[drcurtis]

I had a classmate in dental school who got a whole box of karaoke disks that were scratched beyond use. He used a benchtop lathe with a buffing wheel to polish them, first with tripoli, then with a product called hi-shine. They are used for polishing acrylic retainers. It took a while, but he got about 100 of them back in working order.
I have the equipment in my office but haven't needed to do the same trick. My wife bought the manual disk doctor which is a piece of crap in my opinion.
I should see how hard it is to do one in my office and start charging my patients to fix their games and dvd's

[Slate]

I have a blank CD that has about 100 megabytes left (Tried to burn emulators onto it but it didn't work) So, do you think i should.. "Test" These methods with this bad CD?

[Jorpho]

If the CD is readable at all, there can't be anything that wrong with it. If you simply can't end another session at the end, then there was probably just some problem with the way the last session was closed. And anyway, some methods that work when cleaning a real CD probably wouldn't work with a CD-R and vice versa.

[Haoie]

Boy, I'm glad this topic got dragged back up when it did. Found out last night that 2 discs of mine are this close to full and total destruction. So after XMAS I'll see if I can get them professionally done, hopefully the video store I went to still does it, as I haven't gone in over a year.

[Atma Shiro]

There is a simple and cheap solution for repairing disks (including DC ~ I would not cut DC more than once, unlike all other disc systems).

To start you will need
~ 1 can of brasso
~ 100 count bag of large cotton balls
~ 1 bottle of either 70 or 91 percent Isophyl alcohol
~ 1 bottle of scratch remover - you can find it at radio shack for around nine dollars
~elbow grease

To begin dampen a single cotton ball with the alcohol and proceed to wipe off the surface of the disk and then use a dry disk to buff excess alcohol off. Nest dampen a single cotton ball with brasso and starting from the inner ring move the ball of cotton with basso back and forth between the inside ring and outside of the disk (not in a circular motion or else you may damage the disk). Repeat 10 times then move the cotton ball left 2 inches and repeat till the entire disk has be cut. now take the disk and a cotton ball to your water facet and use the cotton ball to remove the brasso under the running water. Now grab another cotton ball and dampen with alcohol and rewipe the disk. Now you have remove many of the large scratches (if some remain then repeat cutting step) but the brasso has left numerous micro scratches. This is where the disk repair solution comes in, use about a thimbles worth of the solution on the disk and use a cotton ball to coat the disk with the solution and allow to dry. Allow five to ten minutes to dry and remove the dried solution with a cotton ball and then buff till a sheen forms. Now your disk is finished and ready to play.

[currie64]

hey there!!!!I am new to the board. I have been selling on e-bay for quite some time and a product i use is called the opti-fix pro. You can buy this thing at any walmart for $27 CAD. The product is made by Memorex and looks like a discman. It is motorized and uses 2 sets of wheels 1 for cleaning and one for repair. On deep scratches you can run the disc through 1-3 times but then it works great. In cases where the scratches are not that deep it will smooth the surface out. The solution is made of aluminum oxide which is ironically the same compound that is used to finish some hardwood floors and has a 25 year warranty for a floor. Anyway its a bit cleaner than peanutbutter and i swear by this product and i move alot of stock. Thanx and its great to be a new member on this board.

Clint.

P.S

Emory boards work great on cartrige game contacts.

[lendelin]

I heard that a gool old fashion exorcism works well. Needed:

1. A true videogame nut with a pure heart.

2. Special water blessed by Ralph Baer in a rigorous ceremony. (Some water blessed by Nolan Bushnell was effective sometimes, in some cases it actually deepened the scratches. Some say water casually blessed by a simple videogame designer is enough, but do that at your own risk.)

3. A room steadily hold below 5 degrees F.

4. A game magazine (anyone will do.)

5. An assistant with at least aspiring to have a pure heart.

6. In the cold room, sprinkle the water on the disk while your assistant reads excerpts from the magazine. The disk has to be in a videogame system. You have to cant repeatedly "The power of the collector compells you!" as long as needed.

7. Keep calm, no matter what happens. In some cases the disk spun actually in a 360 degree fashion which cannot be explained by logic.

8. If you hear very strange sounds (or even strange voices), turn the speakers off. If you still hear sounds or voices...well...good luck and pray!

[Chronodriftersx]

sees topic title,

Hmm "neosporin"?

[scorch56]

I just find it ironic that one game store destroys it's discs by putting a big scratch on it.. while others are offering resurfacing services. Is the store you got them from so cheap as to not spring for a resurfacing machine?

Anyways.. I've tried just about all of those methods (except for the blatantly preposterous ones) and have never got any of them to work. My local Gamecrazy (which just came to our town less than a year ago) got one of those smaller resurfacing machines so now I just take all of my CDs to them; and pay a couple of bucks. I haven't had them fail to repair one yet.

I was on eBay just the other day and noticed some people are starting to sell "home models" of resurfacing machines. The one I saw went for about $129 and was a little bit bigger than; but shaped like an electric coffee bean grinder (The disc went on top; on a spindle, under a clear blue lid). While I STILL consider $129 to be too much for something I might only need a few times a year.. if I could get some local game store to give me an entire box of scratched discs.. I might invest in it. But like I said.. any local game store that has one of these machines simply repairs them themselves before they put the game back on their shelves for sale.. so that might be self-defeating.

[Spartacus]

I just find it ironic that one game store destroys it's discs by putting a big scratch on it.. while others are offering resurfacing services. Is the store you got them from so cheap as to not spring for a resurfacing machine?

Actually Scorch, they weren't destroying the disks because of scratches. Almost all of the games and DVD's were in excellent condition. I think they were simply reducing their inventory. EB games would probably send their excess inventory back to the parent company to sell online. Maybe Blockbuster doesn't do it that way. I don't know. I guess they only have so much shelf space to give to any particular item and some product doesn't have any shelf space reserved for it at all. I've never worked in retail, so I'm not familiar how "zeroing out" stock works or what methods are considered normal and reasonable to control excess inventory.

I had a classmate in dental school who got a whole box of karaoke disks that were scratched beyond use. He used a benchtop lathe with a buffing wheel to polish them, first with tripoli, then with a product called hi-shine. They are used for polishing acrylic retainers. It took a while, but he got about 100 of them back in working order.

Funny you should mention that because while I was searching local pawnshops to find a reasonably priced professional unit, I had one pawnshop owner show me a benchgrinder he had set up to polish jewelry with. There were two soft rag wheels mounted on it and one of them was stained red with jeweler's rouge. He claimed he polished disks with it all the time and it worked great.

at the used store i work at we used to have two machines.the one that you could put fifty discs into just broke.it was a four to five step process and the machine cost somewhere in the $12,000 range.the one stand by machine we have just sands down the discs and we put a wax on the discs as well for heavy marks.it works perfectly in all honestly

I looked online at some units for sale and noticed some of the high price ones polished the disks while submerged. Anytime you polish a disk you create heat and risk warping the disk. I guess if your going to make a business out of it, you wouldn't want to take any chances of ruining a disk and take every possible precaution.

To start you will need
~ 1 can of brasso
~ 100 count bag of large cotton balls
~ 1 bottle of either 70 or 91 percent Isophyl alcohol
~ 1 bottle of scratch remover - you can find it at radio shack for around nine dollars
~elbow grease

I did run across a site that swears by using Brasso to polish out scratches. Heck, they even conducted some kind of ad hoc test proving how effective it was and put it on their page. I'm just a little bit leery of using chemicals though. I thought most disks are made of two disks laminated together and I wonder if it's possible for some chemicals to leech into the edge of the CD and possibly cause separation to occur at some point in the future. I'd like to experiment with Brasso, but if I can avoid using chemicals, I'd prefer not to.
Another reasonable sounding method was to get the same scratch removal solution used by aircraft owners and mechanics to remove scratches from bubble canopy's. I'm sure those things are terribly expensive to replace and they must have chemicals to safely removes scratches and minor damage to them. That's something I thought I might also check into.

hey there!!!!I am new to the board. I have been selling on e-bay for quite some time and a product i use is called the opti-fix pro. You can buy this thing at any walmart for $27 CAD. The product is made by Memorex and looks like a discman. It is motorized and uses 2 sets of wheels 1 for cleaning and one for repair. On deep scratches you can run the disc through 1-3 times but then it works great

Hey, I just bought one of those! It looked similar enough in principal to the kind the guy uses to repair CD's at my local fleamarket, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I couldn't get it to grind out deep scratches because the coarsest pad was only Scotch Brite. But I've been meaning to get to the hardware store and buy some sandpaper that has sticky adhesive on one side. Figured I'd cut out two pieces to stick onto the repair pads and see how much material it would remove, while experimenting with grit sizes. I'd really like to get a system down that let's me remove a substantial amount from the surface of the disk and still gives me the ability to bring it back to a mirror finish. I'll post any results I get here for people to consider.

im more suprised that that box o goodies you got
what exactly did you ask them?
doing an experiment - can i have your intentionally damaged disks

Yeah, pretty much! My wife was the one who knew Blockbuster destroyed inventory and when I told her about my plans she suggested I ask them for some. Her and I have been going to that store for many years and they know us very well. When I told the manager what I was trying to do, she had no problem donating the CD's to my cause. I don't know that they are even repairable. I just needed something to practice different ideas out on without costing me anything.

I suspect ordinary soap and water would have sufficed in any of those situations where such outlandish cleaning methods produced any result.

Of course! That's what made it all so funny! After seeing that guy's disk polishing machine at the flea market in operation and understanding that he was actually sanding the disk, I knew that no amount lotions, potions or rubbing was going to remove the amount of material he was. But what really amazed me is that after applying only two soft foam wheels to the disk after the sanding, he handed me back something that had such an incredible mirror finish to it. I was blown away! I just don't see the point in paying him $3 a CD, plus my mileage, if I can come up with an inexpensive solution to do it at home.

That lighter one gave me an idea. Though using an actual lighter may destroy the disc by sooting it up or bending it, why not lightly "fry" it on a really smooth sheet of metal? The outer surface would melt, creating a new, level, scratch-free surface. Does this sound plausible?

Man, I REALLY hope you're kidding!

[Captain Wrong]

Novus II plastic polish.

[Tron 2.0]

I heard that a gool old fashion exorcism works well. Needed:

1. A true videogame nut with a pure heart.

2. Special water blessed by Ralph Baer in a rigorous ceremony. (Some water blessed by Nolan Bushnell was effective sometimes, in some cases it actually deepened the scratches. Some say water casually blessed by a simple videogame designer is enough, but do that at your own risk.)

3. A room steadily hold below 5 degrees F.

4. A game magazine (anyone will do.)

5. An assistant with at least aspiring to have a pure heart.

6. In the cold room, sprinkle the water on the disk while your assistant reads excerpts from the magazine. The disk has to be in a videogame system. You have to cant repeatedly "The power of the collector compells you!" as long as needed.

7. Keep calm, no matter what happens. In some cases the disk spun actually in a 360 degree fashion which cannot be explained by logic.

8. If you hear very strange sounds (or even strange voices), turn the speakers off. If you still hear sounds or voices...well...good luck and pray!

[SlayerX]

So, why exactly did the stores destroy those games and DVDs? They just didn't work anymore? Why wouldn't they just sell em for like $5 each? Someone somewhere would buy 'em, if not to play, then to try and restore to resell...

I don't get it...

There's some pretty obscure methods in there... I just breathe onto the CD and wipe it clean... never scratched a DVD or game in my life, so haven't had to try to resurface it

[Slate]

So, why exactly did the stores destroy those games and DVDs? They just didn't work anymore? Why wouldn't they just sell em for like $5 each? Someone somewhere would buy 'em, if not to play, then to try and restore to resell...

I don't get it...

There's some pretty obscure methods in there... I just breathe onto the CD and wipe it clean... never scratched a DVD or game in my life, so haven't had to try to resurface it

They destroy them because it is more profitble than selling them for dirt cheap prices.

I don't really understand it, But that's what i heard.

[Damion]

I wonder how well this machine would work on that box of Destroyed DVDs/CDs

http://www.cdrepairman.com/

you could end up making back your money if all the BB's and Hollywood videos gave you there throw aways.

[Haoie]

You know what problem resurfacing does? It gives the disc a look different to those non resurfaced, you know what I mean. It just doesn't look the same, even if it's scratches are gone. And there doesn't appear to be any way of changing the look either. It's very irritating.

[Buyatari]

You know what problem resurfacing does? It gives the disc a look different to those non resurfaced, you know what I mean. It just doesn't look the same, even if it's scratches are gone. And there doesn't appear to be any way of changing the look either. It's very irritating.

If its done well the one way you can tell is by looking at the edge. The edge of a new disk is sharper. The edge on a resurfaced disk is rounded over.

[Niku-Sama]

i havent seen it in this thread but automotive waxes and polishing compounds....depoends on the scratch, if its really bad start with rubbing coumpound, then to polishing compound and then to a wax...medium scratches start at polishing and then on and if its lite scratches just wax....they wont look like they used to but they'll work...or atleast all mine have

[Jorpho]

Say, I don't think anyone has mentioned those adhesive disk-protectors that you're apparently supposed to stick on the data side of a CD to prolong its life. Seems like a mighty bad idea.

[Buyatari]

Say, I don't think anyone has mentioned those adhesive disk-protectors that you're apparently supposed to stick on the data side of a CD to prolong its life. Seems like a mighty bad idea.

They used to shalack autograph baseballs to 'protect" them or laminate baseball cards.