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This week brought us news that Sony is ending production of optical discs for its PlayStation 5 console and has confirmed that it will be the last machine it makes with a disc drive.
With Microsoft widely expected to follow suit with its next Xbox, it leaves Nintendo as the sole holdout for physical media moving forward – but, with the two major console manufacturers turning their back on optical media, we could be heading towards a situation where the humble shiny disc becomes a curiosity rather than a mainstream product.
Taking all of this into account, it's worth making sure the discs we still have are in working order, and that's where Dennis van den Broek / PointerFunction comes in.
He's created the RGR ezBuff "Disc Polishing/Resurfacing Machine", a 3D-printed gizmo which returns your scratched or scuffed discs to working condition.
"It's a simple machine, designed to rival expensive options," says the creator. "After finding out (most of) these machines require you to purchase 'minutes' as consumables in order to keep using them, I decided that we as a community should have better options available. This aims to achieve that, with the idea that if anything breaks, it's pennies to replace as well, instead of having to rely on overpriced parts from a dedicated supplier."
The machine can polish out "small imperfections" and "clean the surface of contaminants", and, if you wish, you can "expand it to use as a resurface machine, for those deeper scratches that make games unplayable."
Its maker says he has "managed to get so many discs working again that either suffered from the infamous circular damage or plain mishandling. I sincerely hope, in the first place, that this is gonna help anyone restore their games that [would] otherwise have been considered broken. I go to thrift stores and yard sales, where I picked up a lot of gems over the years, which were too damaged to work, and have now been recovered to enjoy once more."
It won't fix severely damaged discs, and van den Broek is keen to stress that "disc rot and data layer damage" won't be solved by this or any other machine.
The RGR ezBuff is "cost-effective to build and print," and you can make it from a single 1kg roll of filament. "The size was constrained to fit the most common small form factor 3D printer (Bambulabs A1 mini)," says van den Broek. "Meaning even if you don't own a 3D printer yet and purchase one for this project, you can make one yourself for a total price which still costs less than commercial options out there."