Compact Disc Microscopy – Peter Monta’s projects

While refining my CNC microscope setup, I thought I’d have a look at some CD surfaces. Unfortunately CDs are not especially useful as calibration artifacts, since the track pitch and channel-bit length can be varied over ~15% ranges and still be in spec (manufacturers played with these parameters to pack more audio onto the disc). Still, it got me interested in the possibility of reading the data using these optical images.”