A Question For Those Who Have Cut With Diamond Needles

[oliver8bit]

Let's say I throw down on a good lathe and a diamond cutting head. Will I be able to cut into any reasonable substance? Could I cut records into glass? Could I cast my own blank records in urethane or resin?

Also, do these needles tend to wear down or can you cut thousands or records with them?

[VRCM]

I don't have a diamond cutter but I don't think you can cut glass. Not so much the actually cutting of the glass but the allowance for movement of the needle. Plus I think it would chip. Although you could probably cut urethane or resin; even if you don't have a diamond stylus.

[VRCM]

You should look at this page. It talks about some alternatives to laquers.
https://lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?t=951&mforum=lathetrolls

[cd4cutter]

Diamond cutting styli are not indestructible. I used diamonds for cutting CD-4 masters, so I have some experience with them. They wear about 10 times longer than sapphire or ruby when used to cut lacquers. But the edges are very delicate as on any stylus. They can easily get chipped which will result in a noisy cut. I'm sure I wouldn't think of trying to cut anything harder than maybe vinyl blanks with a diamond stylus, although I have never tried even this.

When you cut with a heated stylus, make sure that you clean it EVERY TIME you use it. Small bits of the cut material often get carbonized from the heat and attach themselves strongly to the stylus, resulting in a noisy cut. There may be nothing wrong with a noisy stylus except that it has a chunk of crud stuck on it. You may have to experiment with what solvents work best to clean the stylus, depending on what material you are cutting. Denatured alcohol works fairly well for cleaning carbonized lacquer material, but you sometimes have to scrub pretty deliberately to get the gunk off. Of course you must take care not to chip the edges on the stylus when you clean it. A good stylus inspection microscope is really necessary to see what you're doing and to confirm that the stylus is clean.

[Aussie0zborn]

I used to use acetone and pith wood to cleanthe stylus. Had never used diamond stylus.

If you consider how much harder glass is than lacquer, I doubt yo can cut into glass.

[oliver8bit]

VRCM: do you have a blog or site that lists your experiments with different media? the thought of cutting into spray-paint is totally thrilling.

have you tried cutting in casting resin or liquid plastics? there are some materials that have nice working times. alumilite super plastic has a 5 minute working time where it heats up to initialize curing, then takes another 5 or 10 minutes to completely harden and cool down. i wonder if you could pour it into a record-shaped mold and cut into it while it cures?

[MEGAMIKE]

yes you can cut glass and copper and gold well i think the glass its hardness is harder than copper and gold ..but it can be done...
i have a vinylrecorder and so i use souris blanks wich are perfect for diomond i can cut about 180 records both sides ..well i can now before about 90/100 records and i got better on practice its all in the callabration and weight...the liter the cut the less on the dimond...but years before i used knitting needles and i could only cut one record before it wore out and that is alloy or steel????.and i made my own blanks just found differant types of poly sheets and jgsawed them in circuls but all the blanks were of or a harder polycarbonate than souris, his is softest blanks he has found out the exact type of plastic for diomond , and dimond is the hardest of all materals???but i think that is debatable as well with borite carbine???? i think thats how its spellt..its harder but brittle...

[VRCM]

No I don't have a site. But I did try cutting polyurethane. I built up a coating on a sheet of glass and the peeled it off. It was not quite stable enough to cut on. I thought I could creat a sort of flexi disc.

[flozki]

i use vinylium diamond stylus and polycarbonate blanks.
perfect. perfect chip. low noise. and the stylus is quite durable.

you can get at ameise germany:
http://www.apollomasters.de/product_info.php?products_id=63&osCsid=6af7fcbc473132b4940eec4728f57900

or directly at vinylium:

http://www.vinylium.ch/page/content/view.asp?MenuID=22&ID=19&Menu=1&Item=10

a little bit expensive. but very good and .they ship to anyone. no matter what cutter you use. hehe

it has the 1:20 cone liek standard neumann stylus.
so for grampian, presto whatever you need an adapter.

i can not tell the time in hours yet..but for my disc-o-mat i used same stylus for around 150-200 records (2minutes). the cutting time was not the critical thing.
but the stylus dropped 200 times quite fast on the blank. that was for me the most critical point. but it ssems to be ok.

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[Simon]

vinylium diamond stylus used to half that price

[Internet]

Approximatively 20 to 30 records for me wiht 12min per side on pressed records.
100 to 150 records on Souri's records...