JFJ Easy Pro Universal CD/DVD Blu-Ray Repair Machine 110V with Extra Supply Kit (Up to 250 Repairs)

TLDR: This machine is one of the best investments you can make if you collect and/or resell ANY type of CD/DVD/BluRay optical media. Be it rare and out of print CDs, movies, or video games, the JFJ Easy Pro is a must have. Why? Let's take an example, right from my own experience.I not so long ago I thought I struck retro gaming gold during a swap meet - I found one of the most sought after Playstation 2 games, now out of print: Rule of Rose. If you don't know what this is, go ahead and Google, and then check eBay or Amazon for sold prices.Heart pounding, barely able to contain my glee, I quickly paid what the owner was asking, a meager $20. Why only $20 you ask? Well, I didn't bother asking at the time, as I noticed the ravenous smell of other retro gaming pickers giving me the evil eye. I grabbed my game, and quickly made my getaway.Tears of joy quickly turned to tears of dread as I discovered why the previous owner priced this item so low. It looked like a cat decided to make friends with the disc, and make friends it did. Animal hair, scratches, and something sticky was covering the holy data part of the disc. The scratches in particular were plentiful and of a particular pattern that looked somewhat unnatural. I was now less convinced that this was caused by an animal but perhaps a smaller human child that may have used the disc in a playpen, sandbox or something worse. I was crushed.I called around a few smaller gaming stores to see what they could do to help, but I wasn't getting anywhere. One shop charged $7 for resurfacing, but made it clear that no promises would be made, and if any damage were to occur, it's not their fault. Yeah, no thanks.As I explained my poorly researched purchase to a friend that knows well more about retro gaming than I, he interrupted my whimpering cries with a simple "Dude, just use the JFJ". He was kind enough to let me borrow his machine. So I used it. And it did everything I hoped.The JFJ is super easy to use, and comes with excellent straight forward instructions. The device itself looks a little "homebrew" and built on a budget in some dude's garage, but don't let that bother you.I wasn't a believer at first, so I threw in some older less valuable Playstation 2 games I had, which were also fairly scratched up. Put the lotion on the pads, and have the JFJ massage the pain away. The first disc turned out perfect! I couldn't believe it.I tried a few more discs and all turned out looking like new. I was now ready to run the JFJ on my mangled Rule of Rose disc. In this case, I opted to use the sandpaper first, as the JFJ instructions recommend. I'll admit that I was nervous. On the first complete pass, the JFJ cleaned up most of the scratches, but the disc still looked damaged from some pervasive marks. I called my JFJ expert friend again, and he advised to run it through another pass, again using the soft sandpaper for 20 seconds. I followed his advice and sure enough the second pass made the disc look minty fresh, ready for testing. Here are the settings I used:First pass:Soft sanding (10 secs)White lotion polish (2 min)Blue lotion buff (1 min)Second pass:Soft Sanding (10 sec) x 2 ( I stopped after each 10sec run to check the disc was on tight - more on that below)White lotion polish (2 min)Blue Lotion buff (1 min)So yeah, the JFJ works and it works well. I ended up selling my copy Rule of Rose not long after I cleaned it up to perfection, and used some of the profits to buy my own JFJ machine for future finds. The JFJ is awesome, and I am completely happy with my purchase. I purchased the value pack, which includes another set of disc lotion, disc massage pads, and cleaning rag. It's a much better value for not that much more investment.Just a few things to note:- Be careful not to tighten the disc holding nut too hard. You don't want it loose either. Find the happy medium after you first use the machine a couple of times. If you notice that the nut is loose when removing the disc after a cleaning, you might need to make it tighter.- JFJ warns about a burn-in ring towards the inner part of the disc if one of the polishing pads is dry on the outer edge. This happened to me. To fix, I followed the instructions and put some extra lotion on the edges and sides of the polishing pad. No more inner ring marks.- If you notice lots of lotion on the side of the machine, you might be putting too much on! Several youtube videos advise that you should smear the lotion onto the pad to avoid this as well.- Don't rush! Take your time, especially before using on a pricey disc. Learning how the machine works and testing things out on a few discs will bring you peace of mind later when you use it on something more valuable.So that's my story and long-winded review. Your mileage may vary, but I love this little box of high-speed cleaning goodness. Thank you JFJ, you've made another happy customer right here.

If you have a serious collection of physical discs and you are equally serious about repairing surface damage, this is the machine for you. Do not waste a single penny on any other system out there. I have already saved over 100 discs that were destined for the trash.What the Easy Pro does: Using a multi-step process, it will buff out the scratches and scuffs and bring your discs to virtually new condition.What Easy Pro Cannot Fix: Cracked discs, heat damage and damage to the foil layer. The Easy Pro is awesome, but sadly not miraculous.What you need to know: Get Extra Supplies! The Easy Pro loves to eat through the sponges. The rated estimates are off, so you will need more supplies depending upon how many discs you need to repair. Because the disc is being spun a pretty high RPM, the inside of the Easy Pro with get dirty rapidly. Clean as you go with paper towels. And because polishing is pretty much a friction process, be aware that the discs will be warm to the touch.Improvements that I wish for: I wish the Easy Pro sponge holder was adjustable. A large part of the prodigious sponge eating comes from how much pressure is used to push the sponge down onto the disc surface. This achieves an even finish quickly, but at the cost of supplies and heat. If the pressure could be adjusted, it is possible that a sweet spot could be found.

After running this past about 100 disk or so, the results have been excellent. After following the directions on the first few, a few slight adjustments were made.The idea is simply to use the least aggressive pad to the polish. Each stage will leave marks on the surface, the next stage make the scratches less visible. Any marks on the disk scatter the laser light while reading, so we need the surface to be as transparent as possible. Not giving the machine enough time on 1 step will give you an unreadable disk. The machine will not repair a disk where the silver layer is damaged or defective, it will only make the surface scratch free and transparent.If the disk is scratched, run the fine sandpaper first. If it is really scratched the use the coarse. Check the disk after buffing to see if the scratches are gone, if not go back to the fine and use the blue polish onces its good. I use 10 secs on the sandpaper and the full 2 mins on the white & blue buffing. I also found that it really wanted to sling the compound all over. Once it hits the sides, its wasted. The simple trick is to use your finger to smear the compound into the pad. It doesn't take much to keep it from flying off the pads. The other trick that works good for me, is use a spray bottle to spritz the pads, but don't wet the sanding pads. Once the pad are saturated with compound, all it takes is couple of drops of fresh compound, and few trigger pulls from a spray bottle of clean water to re-wet the rest of the pad and bring the dried compound back to life. The compound does wear out so you need to keep reapplying a little more with each run.With this method I have taken some really badly scratched DVDs back to playable, and some slightly tired looking back to new appearance.