Produplicator 1 to 3 24X Burner CD DVD Duplicator - Standalone Copier Duplication Tower

Very good product. I have been using an older automatic duplicator but it started acting up so I went back to burning one-at-a-time using my computer's drive. I could get about 4-5 per hour that way. I recently had and order for 150+ discs of a video I recorded for a school show. I didn't look forward to the prospect of spending close to 40 hours just feeding discs. So I started researching duplicators and found the Produplicator line of products.The 1-5 unit fit my budget. I chose the M-Disc unit simply because I wanted to see what that format is like. My current need doesn't require it, but it was a nice bonus. I haven't had a chance to play with that yet though.The unit arrived well packed and from the outside it looks like a small to midsize tower PC. The instructions were very straightforward and complete. I normally like to just fire equipment up and try things out without the instructions. For me, if the interface isn't intuitive out of the gate I know I will be having to consult the manual every time I use it because I will have forgotten something. The interface on the this Produplicator is pretty simple and the unit boots very quickly which is nice since I only power it when I have some duplicating to do so being able to get going quickly is a big plus.I'd rate the out-of-the-box-no-instruction operation at a 7 on a scale of 1-10. Because the LCD is just a couple of lines, there isn't a lot of clues as to how to get going, but since this isn't meant for a pure novice that's okay. Without consulting the manual I was able to put in a master and fire off copies in about 10 minutes of looking around the hierarchical menus. I have subsequently taken time to look over the manual and have since setup some options. I've come back to the unit a couple of times now after long (days) breaks and had no trouble remembering the simple stuff.One aspect of this unit that I didn't care for was where in the tower the control panel is placed. The master drive is on top with two duplicator drives below it followed by the control panel and 3 more duplicator drives below that. With drives 2 & 3 open the controls are sandwiched in between and it's hard to see the display or reach the controls. Although I probably voided some warranty, I opened up the case. As you can imagine it's pretty straightforward. A bunch of power and SATA cables connecting the drives to the control board. Power supply is on the bottom which lends some weight to the unit and it feels rock solid (as opposed to having it mounted up high where these things sometimes feel like tip hazards). I took the liberty to move the control panel to the top, with the master drive just below it, followed by the 5 duplicator drives. That is a much easier configuration for me.Performance wise this unit is great. I can knock out 5 copies in about 8-9 minutes, so that works out to about 25-30 and hour which for my previous order, meant I only needed 5 hours to get the job done. I really like the status indicator showing how much burning is left, both in bytes and %. I could fire this up, turn around do some work on the computer and glance occasionally to see how it was going. I did have one bad disk and the unit did a good job of telling me and popping the disc out. I've used the unit now to fulfill several orders and it's been a breeze. My prior unit was nice in that I could load up a stack of 100+ discs and walk away, but it would take many hours of two burns at a time (4-8x) to complete. I was a little leary of having to feed this unit, but like I said it fit right in with other things I was doing and really didn't require a lot of time to tend to.My unit appears to be able to have a HD installed, allowing for images to be stored from the master disc. The manual has instructions for how to do this via menus and I may try it at some point. There isn't much information however about any special needs for the drive (format, capacity, etc.), but then again the unit didn't come advertised with one so I understand not everything will be laid out.Overall, very happy.

My wife and I needed to burn a set of nearly a hundred music CDs. Having always done our duplication on several old Dell computers that spit out a copy about every five or six minutes. Having worn a trail through the house to each computer to keep collecting copies and feeding blank discs, we decided to try Produplicator. I had looked at the hardware that would be required to set up a homemade duplicating tower. Like most other projects, I found directions for that on on Youtube. Just a bit of price shopping showed me that it would cost me about as much to build a duplication tower with seven burners from parts available on Amazon (and perhaps a bit more) as it would to purchase Produplicator. I feel my decision to buy this unit was an excellent one. It came extremely well packaged and cushioned against the destructiveness of shippers and warehouse demolition teams. We set it up with no trouble, copied one disc as a trial and then seven discs. This machine has settings to test the accuracy of each copy before spitting it out. We ran the entire batch in a little over an hour while sitting in the office drinking coffee, enjoying each other's company, and putting the completed discs in their cases. We intend to use this tower only occasionally. However, it has been our experience that whenever folks tool up to do a task, the task they do develops a wider demand. We shall see where this goes.I cannot tell you how long the duplicator will last. The burners have LG logos and my experience with LG has been positive over the years. Should one go bad, it will be easy to replace. All parts are available from Amazon. For us, living in the piney woods of East Texas thirty-five miles from the nearest electronics store, having stuff delivered to our door or mail box at a cost far less than the cost of driving to town where the item we need is either not there or more expensive is a blessing indeed. I'll update if it lets me down. For now, I recommend this product that does what it claims to do.No matter how clean your home might be, there is always a little dust in the air and tiny static charges make it cling to inner and outer surfaces. So I also purchased a dust cover by Computer Dust Solutions for this tower. Looks good and keeps the elegant black tower looking elegant and black. It also matches the dust covers for printers and other hardware sitting in the office.