The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Once again, may I begin by extending my thanks to the many experts who have continued to post interesting and extremely useful information to this forum. I began my experiments with analogue disc recording about 18 months ago, starting with a home-made clockwork lathe flung together from the remnant...

I'd be interested in any answers to the original post, as I'm in a similar situation - trying to choose a good direct-drive turntable for indenting/embossing on polycarbonate. There are several turntables on the DJ market that promise up to 5kg.cm of torque, but this is described as 'starting torque...

Built my first lathe about a year ago, from some scrap bits of wood, Meccano and a motor from a wind-up gramophone. A couple of small speakers functioned as a cutting-head. Total cost, including second-hand turntable to use for recording, was about sixty pounds or USD 100. In October 2011 I built a ...

I order polycarbonate, to use on my home-made lathe, in A3 sheets 1mm thick. A couple of companies sell these on eBay in packs of 10; using the company's own website works out a bit cheaper. Cost is about GBP 28 to 33, including VAT and postage, for one pack of 10. One A3 sheet provides enough for t...

Hi - well done with your lathe - you're getting a really good sound out of it! I found your posts particularly interesting because I've been following a similar path to yours, embossing on polycarbonate with a home-built lathe, and have run into problems because of insufficient torque in my recordin...

Hi again, and thanks "d" for your comments! Since my last update I've made a couple of minor improvements to my disc recorder - replacing the battered Meccano I'd used for the feedscrew with a rather better quality pulley and bearings. Result is a much more even spiral on my finished records. Most o...

Hi Mark, emidisc - many thanks for reviewing my documentation and providing comments! My progress so far has been based purely on experimentation, rather than any exact science, working things out by simple trial and error and making adjustments to get the best results I can. As you pointed out, you...

First of all, thanks to all the informed and knowledgeable posters on this board for making such an invaluable site. At the beginning of April I decided to attempt to build a simple record lathe, as a novel solution to the problem of secure data destruction of old CD-Rs/DVD-Rs with personal informat...

Hi all, I'm David, and I live in the Scottish Highlands. I have had a long-standing interest in everything to do with records since the age of about six. Despite having no technical knowledge worthy of the name, I started building a very primitive lathe out of old bits and pieces about six weeks ago...