Laser Cut Grooves... A Cutting Laser makes a record

[opcode66]

I suggested that this was possible at least 2 years ago. Everyone said it wouldn't be possible.... Well, all the doubters were WRONG!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2323708/Forget-vinyl-turn-music-downloads-records-wood.html

[Angus McCarthy]

It's a curse of mine to seek an analogue analogue to these kinds of things.

Laser reflected off of a high-precision mirror; mirror mounted at the fulcrum of a cantilever set in motion by a small voice coil. Such a rig might be mount-able to any existing lathe.

[opcode66]

I was originally thinking more of having all the grooves rendered as 3d data from the audio. Then you could print the record with a laser etcher. But, 6 of 1, 1/2 dozen of the other.

[Aussie0zborn]

Neat. She is certainly on the right track but she might have done better cutting into a picnic plate rather than wood. It won't be long now.

[audadvnc]

Wood? Cute, but you can see from the photomicrograph that wood would not make for a clean cut. Besides, in my limited experience with laser cutting of wood, the cut edge should show scorch marks from the intense heat. These grooves look like they were cut with a stylus.

I doubt if this method would be applicable to lacquers. What happens with the cut material? Is it vaporized? Isn't record lacquer a highly flammable cellulose nitrate - the same thing as guncotton? Looks like there may be fire safety issues surrounding this technology. It might work well with polycarbonate or vinyl, though. Even a metal - we could go platinum!

[JonesMo]

It's definitely not applicable to lacquers, although if this were to become a popular alternative, there would be some work in trying to find a proper substitute that doesn't cause too much noise but cuts nicely.

Laser cutting records is actually why I'm here personally, as I don't have much money to spare and don't have any of the usual machines for cutting records, but I do have access to a laser cutter.

I technically have a "better" laser cutter for the job than she does (mine has a smaller laser, which should mean smaller, more correct groves).

I've been working off her code to improve the sound quality, and put it into stereo. I've yet to be able to try any work out as of yet, but I am very excited to do it. No matter what, it won't be perfect, but I'll take spending zero dollars over thousands any day

[ROLANDJAYS]

laser cutting machines are very expensive, need a lot of up keep, and power. there are 10 other ways to do it better and cheaper. I think there just showing everyone what is possible even though it isn't logical.

[opcode66]

Care to elaborate on those 10 other ways... Besides conventional cutting and lasers, I'm unaware of 10 other ways. I'd be interested to hear you thoughts.

With respect to lacquers, apparently that is not the case. We have posts on the site discussing laser etching a lacquer before or after it is cut with grooves. They did not ignite. So, there seems to be no issue with this. There are many examples of pressed records with laser etching of the master lacquer.

[JonesMo]

Well I'll be honest my level of research has been spotty at best so you can probably take everything I say ever with a grain of salt. I'm already surprised, but would probably be more surprised if there wasn't some level of melting that made the extremely small grooves improbable. Maybe I'm wrong on that too, but I won't end up being the guy to test it just in case it destroys the very expensive machine. I'm going to look into it though. Color me intrigued.

I'd also love to know what the 10 other ways are. Hell, maybe I could do one of them!

The only reason I can see laser etching as not an 'illogical' alternative is because laser cutters can be used for other things. I have "technically" free access to a laser cutter, as it is in my school for use by anyone who wants to use it (and gets permission). I may be part of a very small minority of people with access to a laser cutter who's interested in this as of right now, but who knows? Maybe some day laser cutters will be more available? Similar to how 3D printers have slowly been making their way into the home (amanda from the article also made the 3D printed records), it's always possible. It's all speculation and soothsaying anyway, I'm just trying to do something practical for me that can allow to experiment with all of my interests!

[opcode66]

As long as you cut the grooves deeper than the etching it doesn't matter how the etching affected the surface of the disc. You are cutting into it. I.E. you are removing the surface and the imperfections that might have been created by the etching.

FYI, it is my understanding that an etching laser vaporizes the material at very discrete locations. So, there would be no melting. I figured the heat would be enough to ignite the lacquer, but that seems not to be the case.

[markrob]

Hi,

This is a very cool project and I wish you luck with it. Anything you accomplish will be useful.

What is the resolution of the the best laser cutters? I have a feeling that they in no way get close to being able to cut details as small as the current state of the art. Have you done the math to determine what resolution (peak to peak excursion) is required to cut a 20 Khz sine wave at 10cm/sec (a typical high recording level at this frequency) as well as minimum excursions over the recorded bandwidth given a 60db signal to noise ratio? It gets pretty scary when you run the numbers. You find that some of the details cut are approaching the wavelength of visible light!! Its always been amazing to me that what on the surface seems to be a crude technology, turns out to be very high end and hard to beat. This is true for the cutting, plating, pressing, vinyl surface quality, and playback systems.

Mark

[opcode66]

1. This is not my project.

2. I didn't say it would replace conventional cutting.

3. I thought it was neat and shared.

That is all.

[markrob]

1. This is not my project.

2. I didn't say it would replace conventional cutting.

3. I thought it was neat and shared.

That is all.

Hi Todd,

I was not directing this at you. I should have quoted the poster that I was referring to. He seems to have the resources to give this a go with a higher end laser cutter and I was interested in the limitations.

Mark

[Greg Reierson]

Or maybe a focused ion beam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB4fA2KbFXs

[opcode66]

If you were to use any sort of beam or what not to cut grooves, you would need to be able to vary the depth accurately. Otherwise you couldn't really form a V shaped groove. I wonder if the focused ion beam can form an accurate V shape groove. Seems like the accuracy and scale are very good.

[aaron]

Supposedly souri has been developing a laser-based record cutter for the last few years. Supposedly it cuts faster than real-time. Has anyone seen one these machines? He told me he has a few prototypes out to a couple users.

[opcode66]

Can anyone confirm this? Very interesting.

[ArchaicRecords]

The experimenters who are attempting to create a record cutter/lathe/recorder that cuts a groove with a laser, while researching for the best method for transferring a WAVe file to a properly cut phonograph groove, it might help to study a properly-scanned/digitized phonograph groove. To scan/digitize a phonograph groove properly, it would be best if the scanner can scan at the molecular level 3-dimensionally. This has already been done by one Carl Haber at the Lawrence-Berkeley Laboratory using a Cyclotron molecular scanner, with which he invented a phonograph scanner called the IRENE, which captures down to the sub-atomic particles that make up a record. It has been in use by the Library of Congress since around 2008. IRENE can scan records of any size, shape, dimension - cylinders, discs, and can even scan pieces of broken records which can be pieced back together in the computer. 3-dimensional IRENE scans can be turned into WAVeforms using Haber's software. Since 2008, there have been quite a few reports from time-to-time on the major news networks and other media showing various phonograph retrieval projects using IRENE (such as audio recovered from the 1963 JFK motorcade that was recorded on a phonograph groove on a cylindrical dictaphone belt, and Phonautographs from the 1860s). "A disc or cylinder is placed in a precision optical metrology system, where a camera following the path of the grooves on the object takes thousands of images that are then cleaned to compensate for physical damage; the resulting data are mathematically interpolated to determine how a stylus would course through the undulations, and the stylus motion is converted into a standard digital sound file."
As Carl Haber explains, the digital resolution needed for a scan of a phonograph groove is in the gigapixels. To reverse the process, feeding a 3D printing, laser, or milling device with a 3-dimensional digitized groove to create a phonograph groove, will require gigapixel resolution to get it right.
Check out some articles:
National Geographic (9/2013) [may require registration to access]:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130925-genius-macarthur-carl-haber-sound-bell/
NPR (9/25/2013):
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/25/226034788/latest-macarthur-geniuses-include-sound-savior
youtube interview (9/24/2013):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkyC5qo94b0

[Steve E.]

For archival purposes, I'm putting the article here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2323708/Forget-vinyl-turn-music-downloads-records-wood.html

wood record

You can now turn your favourite music downloads into playable records made from materials you have lying around the house.

Amanda Ghassaei, 24, from San Francisco has created the world's first laser-cut wooden records using songs from Radiohead and Joy Division.

And the software engineer has made the instructions available to download, making it possible to create your own at home.

Ghassaei previously used 3D printers to print records from her MP3 downloads.

She wanted to find a way for people without 3D printers to make their own records, and has designed a way of making records out of paper, acrylic and wood.

Ghassaei created a digital waveform file from the MP3 and converted into a PDF.

Needles on a record player pick up vibrations based on the shape of the record's surface.

The waveform was then cut into the wood using lasers to create the 'shape' of the song.

Because the resolution of the laser is thicker than the vinyl record presses so Ghassaei had to make the grooves twice as larger as they would be on a vinyl record.

This means that a wooden record can only fit around three minutes of song onto one side, and this means the song becomes more distorted as the needle moves towards the centre of the record because the sampling rate decreases.

Ghassaei explains that if people don't have a laser cutter, they could try a CNC mill or a CNC razor blade paper cutter.
The laser cutter cutting the grooves into the surface of the wooden record.

She said: 'For me, the most interesting part of publishing these projects is to see where other people take them, and the 3-D printed records were just a little too difficult for an average person to experiment with.'

'I’m hoping that people will download my code and make their own records, or make something I haven’t even thought of yet.'

'Some songs are better suited for this process, songs that are very full in the lower to mid range, but also very sparse overall are best.'

'Idioteque by Radiohead was a great example of this, it has very strong low to mid tones with minimal backing synthetic drums.'

'What I really want to do next is get some 12″ wood rounds, the kind with a live, rough edge and cut some records right into the rings of the tree.'

Ghassaei is a software engineer at Instructables. She has put step-by-step instructions on the site, including file downloads.

HOW IS IT DONE?

Amanda turns her MP3 audio files into waveforms.

These digital waveforms are then converted into a PDF to become what's called 'vector cutting paths.'

The paths are cut into the wooden record using lasers; this creates the 'shape' of the song onto the surface of the wood.

The needles on the record player pick up vibrations created by grooves (pictured) and patterns created by the lasers.

Because the resolution of the laser is thicker than the vinyl record presses the grooves are twice as large as they would be on a vinyl record.

This means the quality isn't as good on a wooden record as on a vinyl, and the song fades to a scratch as you get to the centre of the record.

Get full instructions from Ghassaei's Instructables page.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Cut-Record/#step1

[Steve E.]

Related topics:

3D Printed Records

3D printer (3D Printed Record by Amanda Ghassaei)