SAGARIKA ACOUSTRONICS

                   A report by Kapil Thirwani-AES student member

It was a hot Saturday afternoon, all AES members gathered at shoppers stop , Andheri. We took a mini bus to Mahape , New Bombay.It took us an hour and a half to reach the place, which was situated at the heart of the Electronic zone of MIDC. The place is Sagarika Acoustronics Pvt. Ltd., the leading CD replicator & cassette duplicator.

The entrance was a gangway used as the loading and unloadind dock which separated two buildings. We entered the building on the right which had the administrative office and the conference room on the first floor. We were guided to the conference room which couldn’t accommodate  so many of us but we managed to adjust. Before going anywhere we all signed the attendance register and clicked few snaps of the members holding the AES banner. We were then greeted by Mr. Madhusudan Nair ,who gave us a brief outline of the company

Sagarika was first only replicating cassettes. They started out with a small firm and now have grown into three plants, one being the place we visited and the other two situated inside the boundary of Mumbai city. They are the  major duplicators for SAREGAMA India(previously HMV), Magnasound, Universal etc. and  recently have started their own music label  ‘sagarika’. We were introduced to Mr. Shubhankar Das, the owner & head of the production plant. Now Mr. Shubhankar took over and gave us abrief background of his company which was started by his father who worked in Polydor, the Indian arm of Polygram.

Mr. Shubhanker  being a commerce graduate and being interested in the family business approached few eminent people in the industry and with their guidance completed a nine month diploma at the Institute of Audio research, USA. Now the company is headed by four directors, all family members, heading various departments. Mr. Shubhankar is the Techincal Director and handles the plant completely. Working under him are Mr. Nair handling the CD division and Mr. Rajesh Kathuria, the incharge of the cassette division. Both are Engineering graduates, with Mr.Kathuria, having a BE in mechanical and  Mr. Nair having in it in Electronics  

Here we began our industrial visit,we went up to the second floor where the sections were divided into studio and cassette plant. Footwear had to be removed because the replicators work on the principle of ‘Cleaniness is next to Godliness’. We visited the studio which is subdivided in to two similar setups so as handle lots of load if the need arises.

 Mr. Das explained that the master copy which they receive from their client which comes directly from the recording studio has to be mastered here, the procedure for the CD master is simple as they copy it directly to a CD-R, but for the cassette purpose compression has to be used as the cassette doesn’t have the similar dynamic range as the CD. After compression the equalizer is used so as to restore any brightness lost due to compression. Then the Duplication Master is prepared. A half inch, four track Studer is used for analogue applications and a CDR for Digital loop bin. The software used being WaveLab and SADie.

The next step was to go to the cassette floor which was divided into the replicating area and the loading area. On the replicating side there was a single master and six slaves. The equipment was a LYREC product which is a Danish company works on the principle of  loop bin, here the duplication master tape is loaded on the machine  and the two ends, the start and the end are joined so that a loop is formed. Before this the machine punches a hole at the start of the audio to mark the start signal for the loading machine to cut the pan cake at appropriate points. This machine has a number  of pinch rollers around which the master is guided, as this machine runs the audio is transferred to the slaves which have empty tape loaded on them. One master produces about 50000 cassettes but they restrict it up to 30000 odd cassettes as further on the quality detereorates. Then there is a digital bin made by LYREC. The most important improvement is the quality of master which remains unchanged throughout the whole production unlike the analogue loop bin. The duplicated tapes are  in the form of spindles called as pancakes. Each pancake has around 33 copies on it and are now ready to be loaded in the cassette skeleton or plastic body.

Going to the loading section we have around six Kronos 5’s and 6’s which are the loading automation machines. The C0’s or C zeroes which mean cassette zero time or empty cassettes (which are incidentally assembled by hand at a different plant)are loaded on the feeding mechanism of the Kronos’s. The C0’s have a white leader tape which may have the music company logo has two ends connected to the gears. The Kronos is loaded with the pancakes and the loading mechanism starts. The cutter cuts the white leader tape exactly at the center and sticks the start of the tape, winds the tape till the end and sticks the end to the other half of the white tape. Start and the end of the tape is sensed by the cue signal given to the Kronos. Once the cassettes are loaded then piled and moved on.

The next section which is close to the loading area is supplied the cassettes by a conveyer belt. This is the stamping area, which comprises of a 20 year old Apex machine which is still running very smoothly. Thanks to the staff who runs and maintains it and has even updated it.  The artwork  is provided to the company which is in the form of the negative. An etched plate is then made. These plates are mounted on the moving part of the machine which does the actual printing. The ink is supplied to the blanket which is soft in nature and does the actual contact printing with the cassette. The end product is dried and is ready for packing which is the next section. Thus the complete process is a closed loop and works efficiently. The printed inlay cards come from the clients according to the order.The cassettes are packed with these inlay cards & are further packed in boxes and lowered by an elevator to the loading dock of transportation. This is the cassette manufacturing loop which produces 60000 cassettes a day

After completing this section we went to the administrative office where we had some snacks and some tea. While all this, discussions were on various technologies and the similarity of manufacture of LP’s and todays CD’s. The hot topic other than tea was the transition from records to the cassettes and now from cassettes to CD’s leaving aside the price factor.. 

Going to the CD plant was just getting in to the next building which was situated on the ground floor. Footwear was again not allowed as we were entering an optical media zone which means no dust. The  CD manufacturing process is another ball game which is based on different rules and techniques.

At first the master CD is sent to Singapore for the making of the stamper. This process is time consuming and expensive and the plant has lots of investment & there are no stamper making or Glass Mastering plants in India, except one  in chennai. Each stamper costs approximately Rs.40000/-. including the transportation and custom duty. The procedure of making the stamper is simple and as follows, there is a glass plate on which is spun a photoconductive material. There is laser whose source is connected directly to the audio data from the CD source master. The intensity of the laser varies according to the data which is in binary form. When the data is zero then laser is off else on. Thus the laser etches the glass into lands and pits, lands correspond to 1 while pits corresponds to 0’s. This plate is then glycol washed and then is put into the electrolysis tank. Here the cathode is a nickel circular plate kept on the glass slab and the anode are nickel pellets. On passing electric current lands and pits are formed on the nickel plate which are the opposite of the structure on the glass plate. To send the master and to get the stamper back takes seven days.

Once the stamper is ready production of CD’s can start. The raw material is polycarbonate of grade CD2005 made especially for CD. The companies manufacturing this are GE, Bayer etc. Here they use the Bayer Makrolon (PC) which is packed in  bags of 135 kgs. This raw material has to be dried to the extent of 0.0001% in LANCO dryer for about 4 hours. Once dried it is fed to a NETSTAL Discjet6000 machine through a top loading system via vacuum tubes. This raw material enters the main pressure barrel which uses  the principle of injection moulding to melt the polycarbonate into pure transparent liquid. The end of the barrel ends in the form of a flat plate, this flat plate stamps on to another plate which has the stamper attached to it. At a pressure of 80 tons the stamping takes place and the CD is formed which has the same structure as the original glass plate with lands and pits. This transparent media has the data but is of no use as the CD player cannot read it as it needs a reflecting surface for the laser to reflect back in the CD player. This process takes 3.5 seconds and now the CD’s are fed in to a machine made by Singulus Technologies. In this we have a pure aluminium disc loaded into the machine. The principle of directionality is used by passing a large amount of electricity through vacuum filled with Argon(Ar) gas which forms a plasma thus high directionality. A thin layer of aluminium of the order of 80nm is deposited on the CD on the data side, that is the side where lands and pits are situated. This assembly  is then covered with lacquer which is spun deposited on the aluminium layer to protect it. This process also takes around 3.5 seconds.

The CD is ready and is taken for the process of printing. Printing is done using UV dyes and using secondary coloration techniques i.e cyan, magenta, green and black. Thus there are four cycles of coloration. Each time CD is coloured is UV dried as the technique is dry on dry technique. Here we get the end product which is packed in the jewel case and sent for transportation.

Seeing all this we all were amazed and excited and asked Mr. Das a million questions on various aspects of the process. In the end we all thanked the concerned people and Mr. Das for their cooperation and time. All the members felt that the efforts of driving down to this factory in remote Industrial area was very much worth it.