heating steel stylus

[folk]

Hey all,
I'm cutting with whatever I can get my hands on (including steel stylus) to create varying degrees of quality records.
But...I'm wondering if heating a steel stylus will damage my cutterhead(?)
don't want to do that
is there any possibility of scorching the head?
I haven't actually heated a stylus yet as I'm still assembling the cutter, but I know you wrap around the ruby/diamond and not the metal.
let me know if you know.
many thanks

[markrob]

Hi,

Back when I was working on my DIY head and grinding my own high speed stele styli, I used to heat them using nichrome. It worked fine, although you would expepect that the turns would be shorted by the steel shank. It appeared to me that the cement I was using (Duco) formed an insultation barrier and I was able to heat fine. My concern for your head would be the effect of heat conducted through the shank to any damping material. In my case, it was not an issue, but in a head like the Presto 1D, it be be a problem. Since you have to keep the tip of the stylus below the ignition point of nitrocellulose lacquer (about 160 C), I would expect the temperature to be a good deal lower inside the head. I think if you work with caution, you should be OK, but do so at your own risk.

Mark

[petermontg]

Hi,

Back when I was working on my DIY head and grinding my own high speed stele styli, I used to heat them using nichrome. It worked fine, although you would expepect that the turns would be shorted by the steel shank. It appeared to me that the cement I was using (Duco) formed an insultation barrier and I was able to heat fine. My concern for your head would be the effect of heat conducted through the shank to any damping material. In my case, it was not an issue, but in a head like the Presto 1D, it be be a problem. Since you have to keep the tip of the stylus below the ignition point of nitrocellulose lacquer (about 160 C), I would expect the temperature to be a good deal lower inside the head. I think if you work with caution, you should be OK, but do so at your own risk.

Mark

i use steel stylus, conduction is a major problem, i ended up removing both sets of dampners in audax head .

Folk - did you rewind your audax head??

[folk]

thanks for the words of wisdom markrob.

petermontg; Good to know about the conduction. I did send the head to Gib and he fixed it all up and had it back out in no time - I was worried it'd sit there forever.

Now we're sending the whole unit - amp, motor and all in to him to get everything aces.
In the meantime I'm assembling my own cutter with another lower end rekokut cutterhead assembly and a fine old rekokut turntable, using my vintage kenwood home amplifier speaker out to power the head.

I suppose I'll try heating steel and if I have trouble...back to Gib

How's your own cutting going?

thanks for the help
cheers

[petermontg]

audax head is giving me grief going to rewind it next week had to clean it up.

coil was full of gunk so going to put in a new one. and coil holder seems to have seen better days so prob have to replace that too.

i put my presto onto a collins 200s and mounted in a flight case so easy for travel and storage.

am kinda in the middle of thinking of just biting the bullet and picking up a sc-99 from vinylium[/img]

[petermontg]

my question about rewinding is what kind of speaker wire do i use?? just normal or enamelled copper??

[folk]

looking good!
I have no idea about the rewinding. As I said I sent mine to Gib.
He worked fast and was not too spendy so if you have troubles you may hit him up

[markrob]

Hi,

Unless you are trying to re-wind for a different head impedance, just use the same gauge and type of wire already in the head. Typically, this is enamaled wire. Use a micrometer to measure the diameter and consult a table to pick the correct gauge. If possible, unwind the old coil and measure the length of wire used. Otherwise, just fille the bobin and you will be close. You may want to pot the finished coil by dipping in varnish. If your head is a push-pull type like the Presto 1D, make sure you pay attention to the way the two coils are wound (direction) and connected (polarity). With a singe coil design, you don't have to pay much attention. If you are concerned about maintaining the correct absolute polarity, there was some info posted awhile back about the standard for a cutting head (e.g which direction the cutting stylus should move (inward or outward) when a positive voltage is applied. This is used to ID the + terminal for the head.

Mark

[subkontrabob]

Hi folk,

just wanted to comment on the heating. I've cut lacquer with steel stylus heating the lacquer instead of the stylus, getting good results (as mossy confirmed ). What material are you cutting? You didn't specify, at least in this thread.

Wish you all the best with your cutting experiments


PS: nice setup peter!

[petermontg]

Hi,

Unless you are trying to re-wind for a different head impedance, just use the same gauge and type of wire already in the head. Typically, this is enamaled wire. Use a micrometer to measure the diameter and consult a table to pick the correct gauge. If possible, unwind the old coil and measure the length of wire used. Otherwise, just fille the bobin and you will be close. You may want to pot the finished coil by dipping in varnish. If your head is a push-pull type like the Presto 1D, make sure you pay attention to the way the two coils are wound (direction) and connected (polarity). With a singe coil design, you don't have to pay much attention. If you are concerned about maintaining the correct absolute polarity, there was some info posted awhile back about the standard for a cutting head (e.g which direction the cutting stylus should move (inward or outward) when a positive voltage is applied. This is used to ID the + terminal for the head.

Mark

Thanks mark, i found your post from before. I have all the info there was 26feet of wire just didnt know if to use enamaled or not.

Thanks again