New Vice President of Operations in SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES ...

WARNER MUSIC MANUFACTURING
EUROPE Produces DVD 9 with Silicon
on SINGULUS Metallizers
Warner Music Manufacturing Europe -
WMME in Alsdorf/Germany is the
European manufacturing facility for CD,
CD-ROM and DVD for Time Warner, the
world's largest media group. WMME has
produced and distributed all products
for Warner Music International affiliates
since 1975. Audio CDs and to an
increasing degree DVDs account for the
vast majority of production output.
However WMME also provides a manufacturing
service for CD ROM and DVD
to third party customers.
For the time being WMME is the leading
European DVD manufacturer offering a
daily capacity of 170,000 DVDs. Since
1998 the DVD portion of WMME's
product mix steadily increased, reaching
a total of 21 million DVDs by the end of
1999. About 40 million are being expected
for 2000.
The SINGULUS News Team interviewed
Antonio Cerrato, WMME Head of CD/
DVD Engineering, about the experiences
gained from their recently installed
SINGULUS Metallizers for the production
of DVD 9 using silicon for layer 0.
n Mr. Cerrato, you have produced DVD 9
since silicon was first used as a sputter
material. What are the reasons for your
preference?
One reason is the material cost advantage
of silicon for layer 0, which is approximately
85% less than for gold. We started with
DVD 9 in March, 1998. By 1999, DVD 9
accounted for 35% of the entire 18 million
DVDs produced at WMME. In 2000, we
expect this format to account for 70% of
a total of 40 million discs. With regard to
this nearly five-fold growth of DVD 9
production, it is essential to have the cost
and handling advantages of silicon. Silicon
offers the same quality level as gold. Our
climate tests (80ºC/95% humidity/96 hrs)
showed results identical to gold. As for cost,
silicon/aluminum is rated best, followed by
silver/aluminum. Silver/silver alloys is last
and is nearly the same as gold/aluminum.
Out of these, the silver/aluminum combination
has not yet been successful in climate
testing.
n Mr. Cerrato, you have worked since the
beginning of 2000 with SINGULUS
metallizers in your DVD 9 lines. What are
your production experiences?
Today I have
eleven lines
in a three-shift
operation with
four additional
lines to be
installed this year.
In the lines with
your SINGULUS
metallizers, we
have observed
high reliability, low
machine downtime
and increased
daily output of
between 1-2 thousand discs vs. the other
lines. We like the easy operation and have
not had to clean the machine interiors for
five months. We only do routine,
simultaneous mask changes at both aluminum
and silicon stations once per day after
15,000 discs, which takes less than seven
minutes total. The silicon target runs up to
350 kWh or more than 150,000 discs.
Cleaning the silicon masks with a chemical
process and periodically sandblasting is easy
and comparable to cleaning aluminum
masks as usual. In addition, the copper
masks do not heat up during the process,
therefore the handling is easier. Last but not
least: Apart from further maintenance
advantages, we have not yet needed to
change the oil in the pre-vacuum pumps,
which is a task we must routinely perform
on all other lines.
n Mr. Cerrato, where will you buy your next
metallizer?
We buy complete lines, not single machines.
However, we argue for every component,
and we've had good experiences with the
SINGULUS metallizer. It's a valuable
production tool for the silicon sputter
process.