Making a lathe from a linear style turntable project

[SmittyZ1992]

Hi, my name is Zac and I just recently joined and I am trying to find the most cost effective way to make a lathe out of broken or working linear style turntables (like the Mitsubishi LT-5v (which I would love to have) and Technics SL series(which I have one of)). Now, before we get to the obvious part, I have no idea of how to pull this off, besides the replacing and modifications to the linear tonearm as to fit the cutter on it as well as weights to make the cutter effective, I have no electrical experience at all...meaning I don't know how to make a cutter for cutting the record grooves all the way to how to feed the electrical pulses which sends the vibrations to the needle. I would love some help or maybe some advice as to go about doing this, so as to save me some money instead of buying a very cheap suitcase cutter as that's how much of a budget I have right now. Please and Thank You

[sinitsinmike]

I'm thinking about the same thing.

Michael

[markrob]

Hi,

I don't think a linear track turntable is a good basis for a lathe. In playback, the tone are runs on a very low friction bearing (e.g. air bearing) and is guided by the already present groove. In some systems, there is a servo system that attempts to keep the pickup tangent to the groove via small drive motor. When cutting, there is no reference to track, you must generate the movement of the cutterhead directly. This could be done with feedscrew or via a servo controlled linear actuator with position feedback. I'm not sure how the typical linear track turntable would do this without some extensive modifications.

Mark