I’ve owned my Venmill Skip-Away CD repairing machine since they first shipped last June and I’ve been so impressed with this wonderful little machine that I thought I would post about it. I haven’t read much about this machine online, so I hope this helps someone’s research.

Anyone with a large video game, CD, or DVD collection ought to consider a semi-pro CD maintaining machine. Let’s face it, buying used video games is like a box of chocolates… (Forrest Gump can fill in the rest). You may get a pristine copy, or you may get little Johnny’s hockey puck. Sometimes returning a game isn’t always an easy option, so I found that my collection also had a slowly accumulating pile of coasters, including some titles like Capcom’s Powerstone that would be rather valuable if they booted properly.

After I did some research about what was available in the sub-$500 range, I discovered that my options were Venmill’s machine or some very sketchy-looking no-brand machines on eBay in the $200 range. I’ve seen Venmill’s higher end machine, the VMI 3500, in several video store rental chains, so you know they know what they’re doing when it comes to disc repair.

The Skip-Away is different from most CD resurfacing machines. Typical machines — like the buffers they have at GameCrazy — sand off a fine layer of the CD’s surface so that “valleys” created by a scratch will not be so deep.

The Skip-Away, instead, melts the top layer of the CD surface and buffs it smooth using large, soft buffing wheels inside the machine. There are advantages and disadvantages (see below) to this method. The main advantage is that you’re not removing any material from the CD, and can theoretically repair it any number of times.

The Skip-Away has 2 settings:

1. Clean/Maintain setting — CD gets squirted with solution and buffed for 15 seconds.
2. Repair — CD gets cleaned with solution, then buffed for 3 minutes.

Discs come out of the Skip-Away with a glassy finish, sometimes with slight streaks of cleaning solution left on the disc. Light scratches have disappeared completely, while medium and heavy scratches, if any, may still be visible, but not as severe. Light scratches get removed even on the 15 second setting. It is really striking to see the difference after a full repair, especially if the disc has a mix of light to heavy scratches.

My favorite thing about the Skip-Away is that it’s all automatic. Press a button for cleaning or repair, insert the disc, and walk away. After being a slave to the cheap ‘n’ effective but laborious Skip Doctor hand crank, this is welcome by me.

The Skip-Away works without a hitch most of the time. The one exception is that you need to insert the disc in a smooth, deliberate motion. If you stop the disc halfway in, the disc loader will get stuck, and you’ll need “hard reset” the Skip-Away before it’s back to normal.

My only real criticism of the machine so far is that it’s rather ineffective in repairing severe damage with multiple runs through the Skip-Away. I’ve repaired about 200 discs with my Skip-Away so far and only about 5-6 were beyond repair. Putting those severely scratched discs back in the machine will not improve them any — most of the time, they’ll look exactly the same as when they came out of the machine the first time. A truly abrasive machine might work better on these discs. But considering that this only applies to the worst of CD scratches, it’s forgivable. It would be like blaming a doctor for not being able to bring back the dead.

All in all, this is a must have for large game/CD/DVD collections. In fact, with as much disc media that exists, I am surprised there is not a larger consumer market for this kind of device. There are a lot of questionable el cheapo CD repair kits, everywhere from dollar stores to music shops, most of which do little to nothing. It’s nice to finally find a solution to the bane of a media collector’s existence — scratches.

Venmill Venmill’s Skip-Away is available on eBay and also from the Venmill site — price available upon request due to currency fluctuations.

Comparison shot porn!

Please note this is a severely scratched CD and is not representative of what you should expect the Skip-Away to fix. I scratched this test CD with keys and a Dremel tool, so this is beyond normal wear and tear.

Before Skip-Away:

After Skip-Away: