cheaper solution for cutting & plating

[andybee]

so guys, demand on small amounts is more and more,
but the process to make a stamper is very time and money
intensive....
I do laquer cutting and one step stamper manufacuring (one stamper
is directly made from the laquer)...
I think, if I could do my 10" copper blanks by myself, it would be
cheaper?
But, I have seen only 14" copper blanks for approx. 50 Euro each,
so this is not the way.....
so, I decided to do my 10" copper "blanks"
I have ordered a sheet of a blank circuit board, and want to cut
out some 10" blanks....
Have anybody experience in this?
do I need to polish the surface?
is galvano possible with this copper boards?
and yes, I also tryed to make stampers from the souri blanks,
sometimes it works, sometimes not, so laquer is still my fav,
also soundwise....
any ideas are welcome!
thanks!

[flozki]

servuz. andee

yes shure i did it hehe. long time ago even when we had the vms82 dmm machine. and also later with sc99.

in general it works also plating was possible. most pcbs are plated later.
but if you try high speed galvanic. forget it.
but my purpose was do a mini and super lofi diy galvanic. i dont mind to run it overnight. as long everything is automated...
but maybe not that cool if someone needs to press 4 runs a day...

the main problem is that the copper on pcbs and the structure below is extremly uneven...copper too hard.

it was hard already to cut decent dmm records with the best blanks available at the time (teldec). if i talk about decent cuts i mean cuts with deep grooves 80..120 um wide and loud. we even modified the machine at the time to get deeper cuts.
but in copper thats all very tricky. chip is extremly fragile and ifyou have a chip break. the blank is destroyed and you even risk to destroy the stylus.
you dont stay very cool with experimenting with a 1500$ stylus.haha.

we also tried out all sources of dmm blanks available at the time. but the only good once where the teldecs. all other work sometimes.sometimes not. if you produce in house andprocess within very short time it works great.

so in short. i never really enjoyed cutting dmm as i enjoy cutting laquer.

laquer rocks. but we need an european laquer manufacturer...
or again a good distributor as martin was.
or at least the some laquer. material (aluminum sheet and laquer) for a 10inch laquer is maybe 3-4 euro max.

hope to find time once....hehe