How many lathe builders are here

[Adinol]

Greetings,

The thing that brought me to this site were multiple Google searches for home made record lathes. I did find a few posts about that on this board but I can see that lathe building only makes up a small percentage of all discussions here.

As a newbie I wonder how many lathe builders frequent this board and what is the best forum to post in, about this subject. I don't see a Lathe Building Forum, so I'm guessing the most appropriate forum should probably be the Experimenters' & Innovators' Forum.

My first part of building a lathe is figuring out all I need to know about the head. I did find some threads but none of them really share exact measurements or detailed information. If any of you know of a thread 9or other resource) that would give me that information please let me know.

thanks...

[Gridlock]

hella

[Fela Borbone]

Hi!
Welcome! I think the smaller the better, because your cutter wilk work best if extreme ligth. As you browse in the forum you will found different approaches concerning the drivers(speakers, tweeters....).
For an exact size? Maybe just big enough for the lower side of the drivers clearing the blank .

[Adinol]

...your cutter will work best if extreme ligth. . .

Thanks for your reply...

My understanding is that the pressure of the cutter should be significantly greater than the pressure of a turntable stylus. Because the cutter needs to cut a groove. I also understand that this can be achieved either by figuring out the proper weight of the cutter, or by having the cutter spring loaded. I'm actually leaning towards weighing the cutter to achieve the proper pressure. I just think it's a simpler approach for my type of build.

Also, I'm assuming any excessive weight of the cutter can simply be balanced with the counter weight.

Is my line of thinking on this correct?

Thanks...

[Fela Borbone]

I didnt explaim correctly... I meant moving mass, not overall mass of the cutterhead... Sorry I confused you.
And pressure can be adjusted with counterbalance and spring

[Fela Borbone]

Moving mass= the coils and everything that moves with it to shake the stylus

[Adinol]

Ah, I see... Thanks for the clarification.