The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Dear Grooveguy, It is indeed a 1:1 transmission, there was none needed since the original version was tuned to have the lowest vibrations at 100-200lpi. The green thing is no gearbox but a stepper motor stripped of its stator. It serves as an axle with double bearing now, saves me time and money to ...

Ok forget about yesterdays post. Found a way better solution. Now the motor housing is fully decoupled from the lathe on a pole next to the lathe, and replaced the belt by rubber elastics(really dont know the word in English). Now there is no vibration noticable at all on the lathe. IMG-20170330-WA0...

Did a little ghetto upgrade to the lathe. No time to clean up the build this week. Added a belt and a foam vibration damping pad to the motor. A bit crude, but works. At lead in and out speeds there is now only a faint low end rumble instead of a whine. Still not perfect but at least makes the lead ...

That is seriously awesome! What a great idea. Next to being really usefull it makes the lathe look very nice.

Hey, The stylii are both from myshank, grampian type. The old one had a broken tip. The eq is for flattening the resonances and irregularities of the cutterhead, I do not use iriaa, as it is compensated directly via the fabfilter plugin. Its all cut on blanks from myshank as well. I had to redo it b...

In your closeup of the head, it appears that the 'torque tube' (or whatever you call the member that connects the stylus holder to the back of the head) goes straight back; that is, there is no obligatory 20-degree angle that Noel Keywood says is necessary in his paper. Any comment? Well this is bec...

Hello. I've changed the stylus for a new one, took me most part of the day getting everything dialed in again. Needed to re-EQ the cutterhead, made some improvements on the cutterhead connection to the suspension mechanism, reajusted the counterweight and so on. Noise floor is much better, recorded ...

To Gus: Yes that is with the carbon fibre pushrods. They weight 0.3 grams instead of 1 gram for metal pushrods. I have some days leave from work this week, I will install a new stylus and try to get the noise floor as low as possible, also try out the heating. On my current stylus the heating wire h...

Hello everyone I've recorded a sample in stereo this time, using a scarlett 2i2 interface. https://clyp.it/k2ynhwho Recorded with a broken tip, at 75LPI and loud to cover up the background noise. I still make too many operator errors to try out the brand new stylus from myshank. The song were record...

Ok made a new cutterhead yesterday, and finished up the vacuum solution. Going to do some testcuts later this day. IMG_20170302_223126.jpg I made some jigs to align the pushrods, this tiblme 2mmcarbon fibre rods. IMG_20170304_173948.jpg V2 head next to the v1. Tip: aluminium tubes are way easier to ...

A little update: got the lathe control and heat control up and running. Note to self: stop using tight fit enclosures. IMG_20170224_150917.jpg IMG_20170301_205250.jpg It all fits inside, but barely. The whole thing took about 5 days to build, made a lot of errors on the way. It has LPI and rpm adjus...

1st. Where do you find the airpot dashpot? Is there any specific characteristic to choose it? Is it matters the weight of the cutterhead? How you attach it in the whole mechanism, for pulling up and lower down you cutterhead? The airpot is a model 2K160, and has a very wide range of resistance. I us...

Hey everyone ! I've been busy finishing my lathe. I made a nice table for it, plus got a higher powered amp from NAD and an external soundcard. I am still finishing up the electrical parts of the control panel. lathe.png WP_20170129_18_42_59_Pro.jpg Got new 3D prints for 3 new cutterheads in mail, t...

Hey Fred,

I did a resistor torque mod a while back on my SL 1200, and got better results at 45RPM but a speed oscillation at 33RPM. Do you have any issues with that?

Best Regards,

Wim

Here's another testcut, this time about 10db hotter than the previous ones. Still recorded in mono, I feel like an idiot as to why I cant get stereo recorded on my allen & heath ZED mixer.

https://clyp.it/b5dnrmuh

and the original song for comparing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wfSIsAnUzg

I use makeup remover cotton pads. I just hold one against the bottle, then while the turntable is spinning gently wipe across the blank, then direct start cutting. I'm not sure this is the proper way, but works for me.

Hi! I've been working on the machine a bit. I've broke a torque tube by using to much force to set the needle. I've rebuilt the head and added DB9 connectors on top. I switched the setscrew of the shank to a real setscrew, saved almost 0,7gram. I bended a new tube for suction, this time 6mm OD inste...

The prices for the 3D prints are quite reasonable in costs I think (for small parts). The cutterhead body + 2 torque tubes was about 30 euro without shipping costs. An alumium printed torque tube was about the same.

Congrats on your lathe!

Am I seeing correctly that you do the lateral movement by displacing the turntable itselve?

Ok I did a quick test and seems that one of my ortofon cartridges is responsible for the left/right volume difference. There are however slight tonal differences in the left and right channel. I will try to work with left and right seperate EQ's for the next recordings. I ordered a vacuum pump, some...