How To Make USD $900,000 From Record Pressing In One Day!!

[Aussie0zborn]

Is this true????

A large American pressing plant (33 1/3RPM) closes down with some thirty automatic presses. A Californian pressing plant buys everything lock, stock and barrel for $USD $400,000. You might work that out to be about $13,333 dollars for each press. But wait, there's more........

They also get all the nickel masters, mothers and stampers in the purchase price. They sell all that nickel to a scrap metal dealer for USD $1,300,000-00, making a profit if USD $900,000-00.

So the money is in the nickel and not the pressing of records. Next time a plant closes, be sure to get the nickel parts!! It seems you will make more money from scrap metal than you will from record pressing.

Can anyone confirm or add to this story???

[hammr7]

Nickel typically sells for a little over $6/lb, or $13.50/Kg. Granted, high quality alloys can be more expensive, but most scrap dealers tend to pay bulk price. It would take almost 220,000 Lbs, or 100,000 Kg to hit that sale price at the market price. Most scrap dealers I know want to make at least 20%, so you need to have well over 100 tons of high purity nickel sitting around.

And while there might be a library of masters, mothers, and stampers, there might be some legal limitations to giving them away for any purpose, especially if the masters belong to the organizations that used the stamping facility. Then again, it might be that the only choice for the plant owners was to guarantee that those items got trashed. I closed down a recording studio. I was hoping to get the master library, mainly for all the 10" and larger tape reels. Instead the entire library went to a parking lot, where a bulldozer crushed all of them. Even though the recording studio wasn't legally obliged to destroy the masters, they felt it minimized any subsequent legal hassles.

[dietrich10]

I can confirm the story but did Erika's purchase include the nickel plates etc?

To my understanding the owner of 33 1/3 was in the recycling business. I thought he recycled thru his own company. and he let the plant go for this reason....that plant could of stayed running. their prices were soo low. they could of implemented a 25% increase on all charges and kept their customers....
yes still makes me mad.

I went to the plant to collect all my pieces and stock. the scumbags emptied all the shelves of mothers,fathers,stampers into a huge pile so no one could claim theirs....I lost parts for 100 releases for our company. almost sank us.
thats not quite 50k if we wanted to recut and replate all of it.
maybe that was erika's doing and profit. the metal should not of been their property though...the reasoning from plant lawyer that i could not dig out my own releases was that i could not proof they were my intellectually property

[blacknwhite]

I lost parts for 100 releases for our company. almost sank us.
thats not quite 50k if we wanted to recut and replate all of it.
maybe that was erika's doing and profit. the metal should not of been their property though...the reasoning from plant lawyer that i could not dig out my own releases was that i could not proof they were my intellectually property

??? WTF?

Technically vs. musically:

Technically, Patents on processes to make metal plates would all be expired, right? (al > 20 yrs old)... so only "intellectual property" inherently in the making of those plates would be "trade secrets", not protected by law

Musically, by the very nature of the fact that YOU are the one releasing these issues, unless bootlegs of major label releases (I'm sure they're not), seems he would have no legal grounds to deny you posession, when you ask for them back - isn't that basic theft??

Spooky-wierd... too many lawyerthugs in the world - guess these days, you've gotta sometimes hire a lawyer of your own, you know, "for protection"...

I closed down a recording studio. I was hoping to get the master library, mainly for all the 10" and larger tape reels. Instead the entire library went to a parking lot, where a bulldozer crushed all of them. Even though the recording studio wasn't legally obliged to destroy the masters, they felt it minimized any subsequent legal hassles.

TERRIBLE. (Are there not quick-erasure machines to erase these tapes on a fast-wind? Since the reels are probably magnetically shielded so bulk-erasers might not work)

- Bob

[Aussie0zborn]

Good point... that would be a LOT of nickel so this is an exaggerated story.

As for who owns the plates... this is how it worked in Australia. The jacket printer exits the record industry and asks everybody to collect their film works and printing plates otherwise they get scrapped.

The large multi-national record pressing plants had an informal policy of "you own the grooves but we own what makes the grooves" even though you paid for the cutting and processing. This was to deter you from going to another plant. Even so we had a client who brought tons of mothers, lables and jackets from CBS.

[andybee]

in 2007, when I bought the RM Plant (ZYX Records), there was
also a LOT of nickle. But all the old stampers from legendary
Jazz Albums released over ZYX where gone
And, the stamper-nickel was not included in our lot
they sold it seperate to recycle...
we sold the nickel from the galvano department, arround
400 kg, we got arround 20 euros for one kg
we have to get it out of the tanks.... hard work...

anyone wanna see pictures of the RM Plant (R.I.P.) ?

[Aussie0zborn]

Yes Andy, we ALWAYS want to see photos of plants!

[blacknwhite]

anyone wanna see pictures of the RM Plant (R.I.P.) ?

need you ask

[andybee]

http://picasaweb.google.de/7inchpress/RMFOTOSKomplett?feat=directlink

[blacknwhite]

NICE pics.

?
Trimmer?

[Aussie0zborn]

Thanks for the pics. Yes, this is a trimmer in the photo above. Looks similar in design to a Fabeldis trimmer. There is nothing to hold the disc down to the turntable like Alpah manual trimmer.

Didn't know that Werner and Pfeiderer made presses until I saw photos of this machine being removed by the buyer. W&P are ofcourse famous for their extruders and related machinery for the plastics industry. Are there any other brands out there that we haven't heard of?

I take it these are TTT plating baths in the photos?

[mossboss]

[quote="blacknwhite"]NICE pics.

?
Trimmer?

Yep with vacuum hold down You can see the holes on the turntable and the hoses on the left under the t/table They usually have a clamp down air operated swinging lever with a smaller rotating disc just to clamp them around the label area which also carries the cutting knife with it These vacuum ones where quite good and safe from a tired press press operator
but costly by comparison
Cheers

[blacknwhite]

Yep with vacuum hold down You can see the holes on the turntable and the hoses on the left under the t/table ... These vacuum ones where quite good and safe from a tired press press operator

Clever

[andybee]

yes, the trimmer is with vacuum turntable, also
the vaccum moves the knive down.
in the front of the trimmerdesk, there is a switch, this
controls the motor and vaccum.
together with a small vaccum pump, this trimmer works very
well, even with thick picturediscs.

The Wernder & Pfleiderer Press was a normal Hydraulic Press, modified for Vinyl Pressing. There are special made Adapters for 12inch and 7inch Moulds. There is also a small air cylinder to push the lower center pin up.
the press has it´s own hydraulic system and controll board, old but working very well

it is now installed in the www.badische-schallplattenmanufaktur.de
germany, near karlsruhe.

the baths are all TTT, only the big one is another brand, can´t remember

[Aussie0zborn]

Yes ofcourse, the Fabeldis trimmer also worked with vacuum. The big bath is a typical no-name agitating plating bath very common in the electroplating industry. It is used here for pre-plating the silvered lacquer disc at low current before it goes into the TTT high speed, high current baths for rapid build-up of nickel.

So what happened to the TTT baths?

Also, when you say "RM Schallpallten (ZYX Records)" , what was the connection between ZYX and RM?

[mossboss]

Hey All
There are as many variations on record trimmers as there are in record presses They where made by all sorts of people besides record press makers
Alpha's design simple and effective was copied in the UK as well as the US There is a Hamilton design with the air cylinder fixed above the platter as well as many home grown versions made by smaller local concerns all over the world It is not exactly a Hi tech piece of machinery
The best design I have ever come across is the one made by RCA for the short lived 12" video disc they pioneered These videodisc's were all made in record type equipment It included a cutting lathe spinning at some amazing speed to cut direct to metal Wonder what happened to it as well as who made it for them?
That trimming machine had a patent on it and it trimmed as well as got rid of the sharp edge left behind It did the job in three "cuts" Trim 1 trim 2 and remelt the remaining edge to smoothnes Very good design I am sure some of them are still around Would love to know where. Anyone?

[Aussie0zborn]

RCA's trimmer for manual presses was very simple - two rotating plates clamped the record while the hot knife trimmed the edge and a burnishing tool polished the edge. The clamping of the record immediately after its removed from the press and still warm allows any warpage to be dealt with. Typical American design. We sued this type of trimme at RCA SYdney and many years later when I actually owned one we never used it - we just stuck with the Alpha trimmers.

As mossboss mentions, anyone could make one.

[cd4cutter]

The RCA CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc) videodiscs were manufactured on specially-modified Toolex Alpha record presses. The disc material was a special vinyl filled with a very high carbon content to make it electrically conductive. This was required to form one plate of a capacitor, the other plate being the trailing edge of the playback stylus. This high carbon content made the vinyl very dense and viscous when molten which is what necessitated the use of compression molding rather than injection molding of the records as is used for CDs and DVDs (or the early video "laserdiscs"). The original mastering was done at 450rpm and about 9,000 lpi with electron beam recorders, but a mechanical cutter consisting of a diamond cutter tip bonded to a PZT transducer was later developed and used for mastering directly into copper blanks. This cutting-in-copper technology, by the way, was essentially GIVEN to Teldec who then modified it for analog disc recording and it became known as DMM mastering today. The recording lathes used for CED were all designed an built by RCA. Aside from one which may reside in the Sarnoff "museum" in Princeton, NJ (I'm not sure about this), the lathes which all existed at the Indianapolis, IN plant were scrapped when the CED project was abandoned. See my other posting about CED records for more on the mastering and playback of this system.

[mossboss]

It must have been a fascinating place to be in at the time So this is how Teldec got the knowledge from is that right? There are a few patents on the plating of the copper faced masters in so far as the hardness of the deposit for DMM attributed to the Germans, was this an RCA process initially?
Thanks again CD4
Cheers

[cd4cutter]

Moss - Yes, the cutting-in-copper technology was developed at RCA Indianapolis (not at the RCA Princeton laboratories - they were still using electron beam recorders). Of course, it was developed specifically for use in the shallow groove application for CED mastering. At the time, Teldec had their own stylus-in-groove videodisc system that they were trying to sell in europe and they were interested in this much cheaper and easier mastering method of direct metal mastering. RCA traded this technology to Teldec for some of their outdated marketing information which proved useless for the USA market. Leave it to the corporate beancounters and marketing weenies to not realize the true value of things. From the moment I heard about this trade, I was steamed that RCA allowed themselves to get screwed - I personally knew the engineers who developed this mastering system, and they felt "punked", too. I think they may have gotten an "attaboy" from RCA for all their efforts, but that's about all. Jerome B. Halter (Jerry) was the principal developer of the mechanical mastering system, and the PZT cutter in particular. You probably can find some patents attributed to him if you look. I'm sure Teldec had to modify the process to allow the much deeper cuts required for analog disc records, so that's why you see those patents attributed to Teldec.