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MD-Data manufactured in MPO (France)
Photo :
© MPO
On and after this month, the MPO society,
which stands for Moulages Plastiques
de l'Ouest (Villaine-la-Juhel, France)
proposes a new double product : the
Mini-Disc of Sony. Its service
includes both the pressing of pre-recorded discs,
and the supply of virgin
recordable discs as a raw material. After being one of the
first
independant society in Europe to stamp and press Compact Disc audio,
CD-ROM
and LaserDisc, once again, MPO innovates. The
innovation is real for a
enterprise specialized in pressing. Even if the
manufacture of pre-recorded Minidiscs
is classic, and is realized on a
line parallel to the Compact Disc one, the case
of the recordable
Minidiscs is other. This technology is completely different
and requires
special knowledges, different from the ones needed for the pre-recorded
ones.
Recordable Minidiscs are of the magneto-optical type ; making these
Minidiscs
requires the engineering know-how of the successive thin layers
deposit,
and of quality control. Both of these are completely different
from the ones
found in the Compact Disc manufaturing process. MDO
engineers have solved these problems
and developped their own technologies
and the needed materials, whithout forgetting
the obligation to stay 100%
compatible with the specifications written by Sony.
MPO has recently
obtained from Sony the authorization to make recordable Minidiscs.
It
prepares now to sell them on the national and international
markets.
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M. Loïc de Poix, CEO of MPO
If MPO is
today the only independant society to manufacture recordable and
pre-recorded
minidiscs, it's not by accident. Its leaders, among them
M.
Loïc de
Poix, CEO, et M. Marc de Rieux, director of the
research and development
department, began to show interest in this new
medium very early. In 1992, MPO has
signed with Sony a first license
agreement about pre-recorded minidisc. This license
allowed it to produces
stampers and press Minidiscs for consumer uses. In july 1993, after lengthy
negociations,
MPO obtained from Sony a second license, for realizing and
producing itself recordable
Minidiscs. A research team was set up in MPO in
order to design layers for a
recordable/erasable structure which respects
Sony standards. Composed of four engineers
working with M. Marc de Rieux as
their leader, this team has cooperated with an external
research
laboratory. This laboratory had already tuned a magneto-optical layer
working
with optical erasable disks. After some months experiment and
composition modifications,
the MPO engineers obtained a reliable
magneto-optical recordable/erasable structure of
their own.
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Press for Mini-Disc dubbing
and MD-Data substrate
production
at MPO - Photo : © F.P.
Parallel to this,
MPO equipped itself with a first, and then a second dubbing line, set up
in
the Averton (Villaine-la-Juhel) factory. These are completely dedicated to
Minidisc;
one for the recordable, the other for the pre-recorded. These
lines are composed with
injection presses designed for 2.5 inches diameter
media, with machines for the
deposit of several thin protection and
recording layers, and at last a part dedicated
to packaging discs in
cartridges with a metallic shutter. Because contrary to CD-audio or
-ROM,
the Minidisc needs a metallic centring ring and a cartridge with a
metallic shutter, this
needing specific machines at the end of the line.
The Minidisc production capacity of MPO is
3.500 magneto-optical disks pro
day or (NoT : rather and ?) 10.000 pre-recorded disks pro
day, thanks to
an advanced automation. One of the specificity of MPO,
which already showed up about the
CD-ROM and the LaserDisc, is that they
like to control all steps of the production, even
the most technical ones,
and in order to achieve that, they are not afraid of
investing. For
instance, MPO does itself the pre-processing of pre-recorded disks,
which
needs the numeric data compression according to the Sony ATRAC (for
Adaptive
TRansform Acoustic Coding) algorithm; it controls too itself all
steps of the
stampers making. M Loïc de Poix thinks that it is a
security for the client
that the manufacturer controls the production line
from the start to the end, because
only one furnisher is responsible for
the whole work.
>From its point of vue, MPO finds in this situation the
flexibility given by the independance
from the classical intervening
parties. But this policy has a price :
the whole material and the cost of
the research was an 40MF ($6.500.000) investment.
As we could see when we
visited these new installations guided by
MM. Loïc de Poix and Marc
de Rieux, all is done to achieve an optimal
result, which exceeds Sony's
tolerances, as tests prove it. Although the production
team has now taken
over from it, the MPO research team still follows its Minidisc products.
It
equipped itself with a atomic microscope to control by sampling the
production disks ; it
conducts tests of abrasion of the varnish which
supports the magnetic head of
the recorder/reader of Minidisc. On its side,
Sony has given its agreement
only after evaluations of the disks produced
by MPO. This agreement doesn't prevent
MPO from being still owner of the
magneto-optical layer, and they could use it later
for other media, like
for instance MD-Data or optical numeric disks.
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M. Marc Desrieux, MPO
research and development leader
To sell their recordable
Minidiscs, MPO bets on two ways. The first one is the OEM
one, which
consists to produce media for one or two industrialists, who sell it
under
their name. The second is the already in place distribution networks.
MPO
is currently at the end of negociations with two different circuits.
But there are in MPO itself some means the leaders want to exploit : these
are the different
subsidiary companies set in Europe, Northern America and
Asia which will be asked
to sell recordable minidiscs on these markets.
(NoT : the new
"Hi-space" label minidiscs, sold in France at least,
are apparently produced by MPO.)
As we said at the beginning of this
article, once again, MPO is on a totally new market,
and begins
manufacturing of recordable media for the first time.
Discussions
with MPO leaders show that it's a well studied investment,
which open perspectives
much wider than the sole Minidisc, which is the
mean to access markets of
different diameter recordable media. First
samples of MPO recordable Minidiscs
will be available in a few
weeks.
Francis
Pelletier
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