The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

What turntable are you thinking about? My turntables are all belt drive and use synchronous AC motors that run at a constant speed and the speed change is done by mechanically moving the belt to a different size pulley. The technics SL1200 doesn't not land itself to easily remove the motor and use i...

Gus pointed out the obvious which I didnt even think about...the record I used under the clear polycarbonate to aid warming up was a pressed record, and pressed records are not flat!!! On the usual pressed record the rim and label area are thicker than the groove area, which was what was causing a h...

Bahndahn, the people who died while trying to emboss with lighter fluid can no longer post on here to tell us that they died...perhaps that would explain why there is not more people actually embossing records? But seriously, my problem with lighter fluids is really not the fire risk. I just can't c...

Thanks for the information. Funny that you would mention an hydraulic lathe. I was just thinking the same thing this morning. :idea: I have never seen this done on any disk cutting lathe, but it would definitely work. I was also thinking that the same thing could be accomplished using a pneumatic sy...

I have kept on experimenting with different fluids, but I am still finding good old motor oil offers the quietest cuts. I am buying cheap motor oil for this and saving the more high quality oil for the mechanical parts of the lathe. The only downside is that you need to wash the records with dishwas...

In general, helical gears are much quieter than straight cut gears. You can observe this on most cars, where there is a substantial gear whine when driving in reverse and it is much quieter when driving in the forward gears. This is because forward gears are helical gears while reverse gears are str...

Let's get more specific: the feedscrew in the fairchild has a pitch of 35 tpi. This means that you need 11.67 rpm of the leadscrew for 100 LPI, or 5.83 rpm for 200LPI. This would be reduced to 2.33 rpm at 500LPI and 233.3 rpm for a lead out pitch of 5 LPI. So, if I was going to add a motor in a dire...

Chris, do you really mean the motors used for roasting lamb during Easter??? I didn't get it at first, I thought it was some kind of motor I don't know much about... There are several varieties of these, but the common concept is that they have an integrated reduction gear system, which is usually s...

Mark, Neumann uses two motors to achieve this, one for the standard cutting LPI range and one for the faster speed for lead in, lead out and spirals. I don't have such a system but I'm very much interested in the technology behind them. I don't know what type of motors the Neumann lathes used. The S...

Is there any reason why one shouldn't use a synchronous AC motor with a variable frequency drive unit, to drive a leadscrew on a lathe? The idea is to use a belt and pulleys to get a reduction so the motor can spin faster than the leadscrew.

Is there anything speaking against it?

http://i1148.photobucket.com/albums/o575/sabineMagneto/DSC01438_zpsguqogf0z.jpg Here is my embossing setup. It took me a while to take some pictures, but here they are! There is no vacuum suction on this mount, as this is only used for embossing. I made a custom mount that allows the stylus to be c...

The platter is made of cast iron. It is very heavy!

The distance between that part of the feedscrew and the motor is around 18 cm. There is a cast iron platter in between though, as well as the plinth. I already considered changing the drive system, but this one is very stable and powerful. If I would make a belt drive system, my biggest problem woul...

Interesting idea. The carriage is made of cast aluminum with phosphor bronze bearings. The cutter head adaptor is made of aluminum. The support beams of the overhead seem like they are made of cast aluminum and the guide rods(linear bearings) along with the feedscrew are made of stainless steel. The...

Awesome! Sometimes when you think towards the most complicated answer you miss the much simpler one...

My dreams of a vintage orange juice press are now shattered...

It is not a spring or clicking sound. It is a continuous tone at around 100 Hz, almost like coming out of an oscillator. There is no problem with the grooves, no grouping or other issues. The feedscrew was never taken out and it is very solid. I only disconnected the gear that was driving it to stop...

I have recently rebuilt the gearbox of my Fairchild lathe. The lathe is similar to a model 539. There was a bit of subsonic rumble that kept on getting worse and developed a clicking sound that ended up on the records. It turned out to be some scored thrust washers, because one of the previous owner...

The appropriate general name for it is an arbor press with something fitted to the bottom. It really does not seem to have enough clearance to be a dinking machine since the bits at the bottom really do not seem like they have a 7" diameter. If they would have the correct diameter for the dinking ho...

Someone is selling this as a 7" record press on ebay... Its obviously not a 7" record press but I am not sure I can tell what it is. I'm not even sure if it is related to vinyl records at all. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Vintage-Record-Press-For-45s-Cast-Aluminum-2-Piece-Set-Presto-Rek-O-Kut-/35148...

Greg, I forgot to mention the scope, good point! I have one permanently in the studio for x-y an it sees a lot of use. I use the same one also for calibrating the several tape machines. I've also been tinkering with designing and building a phase correlation meter, based on a magic eye tube. I heard...