The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

That's funny, I was emailing him back and forth just last week with questions about the vinylrecorder. He was replying within 1-2 days... one of his assurances was that needles are always available. He was even talking about importing a bunch of machines to the USA and selling them for a flat rate. ...

I know it's been talked about on here (and at least Mark Robinson attempted to build one), but has anyone had any success building a DIY stereo cutterhead? I'm interested in how Souri did it on his machine, I know he used tweeters, but I'm having a hard time finding any good pictures of the head its...

Any news on the Caruso head?

I'm kind of in the same boat... I have a Vitiny UM02 (which I'm going to return) but only has 200x... which isn't even close to enough.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a microscope for close-up views of record grooves? I'd like USB, but it wouldn't have to be I suppose. I'm working on a DIY cutterhead, and I'd like to be able to look at what I've cut for measuring groove depth and proper geometry.

I tried cutting one of these with a sapphire, all I got was screeching. Tried different angles, depths, and could not get any useful cut.

If the damping was removed, would that improve the high frequency response?

This sounds like the same problem I had trying to cut Delrin... it cut real nice with a sapphire, but I made a round blank out of a 12x12 sheet of it, 1/16" thick. It was warped all to hell... and it didn't come with any protective sheeting on it, so it had scratches here and there. I got 3 seperate...

I'd be interested to see pics as well.

Thanks!

So 1500CHF is the price?

Is it still going to come with info/schematics with a feedback circuit to use with it? I thought you mentioned something like that in the past. Is there going to be some sort of user's manual for those of us that don't have the pro equipment to just hook it into?

I have a question that maybe some of the trolls here may be able to answer. There's a lot of talk about cutting into different types of plastics (and even copper!). My question is, would different materials be harder on playback stylii? I was thinking about it, and it seems to me that as long as you...

I wonder if diamond lapping film could do that... maybe chuck the disc in a drill or something and use progressively smaller micron size to sort of sand the grooves off. Might work

I have a home brew lathe, it's basically an overhead mechanism mounted on a piece of wood and you put a turntable underneath it. I'm not sure if this is what's happening with you, but I've had problems cutting if the turntable was in a position where the stylus wasn't intersecting the center of the ...

So I guess it comes down to this for acrylic:

-Use clear 1/16" extruded
-Use black 1/8" extruded

It's really too bad they don't make clear extruded in 1/32" width... then you could just sandwich a couple together and make the insides of them black.

But you're talking NON-extruded plastics, right?

It seems like black extruded acrylic that's less than 1/8" thick is pretty hard to come by

I've never had a successful cut with polycarbonate and sapphire, and I've never cut it with a diamond, so I can't really speak to that. The latest acrylic cut seemed pretty damn quiet though... as long as you keep the swarf away from the needle and don't cut too deep. It seems like you reach a thres...

I haven't tried HIPS.. I don't know about delrin/acetal... I tried to flatten it with a couple pieces of glass and it ended up breaking the glass as it was cooling. Anyone have any ideas on flattening this stuff? The melting point is pretty high... i think like 340-361F. I've found a source for EXTR...

Well, I got some black .062" thick delrin sheets, hacked them into an approx 12" circle. I did a couple small tests with them with a brand new sapphire... seems promising. However, they are warped real bad so I didn't cut much ... and they didn't come with any protective masking so they have scratch...

Is it really softer? Maybe I don't understand the "rockwell hardness" scale, but I saw a chart and it had a higher number than both PVC and polycarbonate. There's a place not too far from here that sells 12"x12" sheets of it real cheap... once I get a new stylus I'd be willing to try it.

Here's a sample I made, using a sapphire, mounted in a Presto 1-C, on my home brew lathe a couple months ago: http://home.comcast.net/~bathory/test-acrylic.mp3 I tried to do some tests last night, but I (stupidly) did some experiments trying to cut polycarbonate a while back and couldn't get a good ...