The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

@fraggle. .002mm=80 millionths inch, which is way beyond the precision needed for record-cuttting, but also it's the wrong application since it's for positioning, not feeding a linear stage at a given velocity. I think you can do for 1/10th that price or less with purchased leadscrew with engineered...

Kto Boris?

Nice work. Look forward to hear their price.

Hi, Automotive flywheel-will the speed cpntrol work at <100 rpm? Do you need so heavy? Aluminum investment castings great idea for high volume, tooling prohibitively expensive for low volume (100's units). Yes, higher coeff thermal expansion than steel, but insignificant effect @ +/- 20°C or so. I t...

Neat idea, but I have doubts that this will work. The first issue I see is pretty much the same as fraggle's point-play between the carriage and the ways. Looking at the carriage, you can see there's a very small footprint on the ways, like a sled with very short runners. The ratio between length of...

Many good points from fraggle and markrob as to establishing the project's intent, and I leave it to them, and other folks, to work out those details. I think it's an exciting project. Here is what I can do: I can develop mechanical concepts, and/or take someone else's concepts and develop them into...

inch vs metric: If I'm not mistaken, the US is the last hold-out against the metric system. Should we design in inches but keep the fasteners metric in the interest of universal availability of replacement fasteners? platter motor: do we use synchronous motor to lock in on mains supply, or other? If...

@fraggle
The 2nd link worked. yes, that is the same concept I had in mind. Yes, born and bred in the USA.

@fraggle Milling machines, lathes, yes. I have an old surface grinder with a 6x18 chuck, with an ok spindle, and no coolant. It's seen better days. I can also do some limited OD grinding on it with a pin grinding attachment. Question-would the vertical movement of the cutter head need to be controll...

@fraggle Some kind of cooperative project would be very interesting. I'm mostly mechanical, too, so enlisting an electronics person would be essential. I think I could design something, yes. I assume you're more familiar with record lathes than I am. I use Solidworks, by the way. I don't know the na...

On the mechanical side, the accuracy need is very high. Consider the size of smallest details that are cut into a groove wall when the max excursion is limited to a few mils and the dynamic range is over 70db. Mark, If you're talking about the cutting head itself, I couldn't agree more. That is not...

Yes, the mechanical part is quite do-able; it's the electronic apparatus that would be more difficult. I designed and built complex injection molds for several years where the largest tolerances were .002", and got smaller from there. I'm sure the best record lathes were built to close tolerances, b...

Trying to find more information about the museum referred to in Mossboss's posting... I'll be in Russia in July, and if this museum is open, I'll make every effort to see it. As for the China connection, IMO, I'd be very surprised if Russia would consider selling a state industry to China.

Hello, I'm new to the world of record-cutting, and I was pretty excited to find this forum a couple of weeks ago. Back in the early 1980s I guessed that with the advent of the CD, record-cutting equipment was being scrapped. I always thought record lathes were cool machines, and now regret that I di...

Hi, Thanks for the link to your site, will read more this evening. Very interesting project. Can you play this disc with a stereo cartridge, and how does it sound? I used to have a stack of AA back-issues, long since lost :-( but I look forward to reading the Reg Williamson article later. A "knife" ...

Hi again, You may not be a master machinist, but I think you've got the right approach, especially about the follower rest. I'm assuming you held the stock between centers. I've single-pointed both 60° as well as all kinds of acme threads on engine lathes, and I have to say, the buttress threads wou...

You mentioned "patterning". Are you getting any runout in the leadsrew? Seems that would raise havoc. I meant to add that the recording leadscrew you cut will reflect lead errors in the lathe leadscrew, but you probably know that.
-G.

Mark, Very nice. Your choice of leaded steel makes sense, and I agree with Mossboss that building a hardened leadscrew would probably would be overkill, especially with a buttress thread. Although I have no idea what kind of accelerations the mechanism produces, but I'm guessing not much (?) Fraggle...

This thread (no pun intended) is a bit dated now, but I'm in the metro NY area and might be able to manufacture new leadscrews for record cutting lathes. First, I need to know how much of a demand there is, and secondly, the details (dimensions, thread profile, etc) of the screws themselves. Any int...