The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Do you have an embossing stylus that would fit the Westrex 3DII head?

A couple years ago I was interested in getting some of my old stylii resurfaced, and asked around with a few jewelers. After looking at the specifications they were spooked and wouldn't touch the project. Makes me wonder how exact you really need those dimensions and angles to be. Would a "close eno...

Buying used stylii sounds about as useful as buying used condoms...

I'm not doubting you can cover your costs with volume, but I'm not familiar with the direct duplication work flow, cutting poly cuts on a system like this. Would you be using the standard Adamant stylus on a poly disk? How many sides would you be able to cut before stylus replacement is needed? I'd ...

This bulb is for viewing the "Christmas tree" modulation pattern I take it?

I cut on a Scully lathe using a Westrex record head which incorporates an advance ball to establish the stylus cutting depth. I understand how that mechanism works, but have never seen a Neumann lathe in action. How do users of Neumann lathes set a cutting depth without a track ball? Is the head on ...

Does the output of the Maxicut circuit drive the cutterhead coils directly or feed some suspension coil that rotates the head and drives the stylus farther into the disk? I'd think either could work, but directly operating on the coils would allow for more rapid adjustment changes without risking me...

Is that a nice unit? Maybe so, if you have the ability to keep it going. Is it worth 35K? Depends, I suppose on your concept of worth. If you have the financial wherewithal to burn 35K on a hobby, what's wrong with that? Some guys take up sail boating, or fancy blondes, others self publish their own...

Thanks for your input. I tested our system today. I made up a series of test tones from 440Hz down to 20Hz, and ran that through the lathe. The Westrex electronics pre-emphasize the LF with a significant bump at 20Hz, but using a Westrex 3B head my cut groove showed pretty much flat response, so I d...

I know the Westrex audio chain puts in a strong bass pre-emphasis, but I believed it is a compensation for roll-off in the cutting head. OTOH, running LF tone (20-40Hz) through the system creates a groove with lots of excursion relative to similar level signals at mid frequencies. I think I'll make ...

I just screwed up my 100 year old mantle clock by advancing the alarm when everything was unwound. It's 7 o'clock here, but chimes for 1:00 .

Bummer...

Went with U-Line: the pizza box guys had hidden shipping costs that drove the price up. I drove over to Hudson Wisconsin and picked up a stack of 50.

I've designed and built a dc motor based carriage drive for our Scully lathe, which originally (and until this year) always took its feed from the turntable drive shaft. With the Arduino-based drive controller taking a rectified DC feed of the audio, the motor receives PWM power through a Darlington...

We're doing something similar on our 1940 era Scully lathe, having disconnected the carriage drive belt pulley from the turntable driveshaft. We move the drive belt onto a DC motor with a step-down gear (about 100:1) and drive the motor with a PWM feed from an Arduino controller running a routine ba...

I was all set to go to U-Line for some of those 16x16 shippers until I saw the minimum order of 50. I think that would last me for years. I found a restaurant supply company that sells smaller quantities: http://www.webstaurantstore.com/16-x-16-x-1-3-4-corrugated-plain-pizza-bakery-box-50-case/245CB...

Back in the day, cutters used small public address amplifiers as cutting amps. A 10-30 watt tube amp would be plenty for your needs - any more is likely unnecessary and risks burning up the head winding. As far as a VU meter is concerned - what level would you set as "0 dB"? I believe you'll need to...

I ran into a similar situation last year that was a combination of the lacquer not sitting flat on the turntable and upward pressure from the vacuum hose (from having been inserted too far, thus pulling back on the head). Once I reseated the vacuum hose and found the cause of the non-flat lacquer (a...

The manufactured advance balls work way better. Get a real one if you can find it.

I use a 5 gallon paint bucket with hose connections in and out. The inside of the bucket is reinforced with a 10 1/2 audio tape flange to keep the bucket from collapsing due to the vacuum.

As opcode points out, one of the line-stoppers is the dimension of a production LP disk. Even if it were feasible to plate a vinyl LP, the process wouldn't take kindly to the dimensional issue.

Looks like I'll be either making a digital copy or doing a direct disk-to-disk transfer.