Noisy Transco Lacquers?

[concretecowboy71]

Recently we have had a large rash of stampers that are extremely noisy and it has resulted in dozens of recuts. I am going nuts trying to put an end to the issue but nobody has any real feedback.

We have heard there was bad nickel going around. We have heard Transco lacquers are defective.

Anybody else getting hit with test pressings that sound full of static / surface noise?

Any feedback at all on this topic is welcome and appreciated.

Thanks!

[mossboss]

Have you played the lacquers back?
The positives?
Cheers

[concretecowboy71]

I do a lot of test cuts here and play back from lacquers all the time and have not noticed issues.

The "plating" shop has been playing mothers and says they cannot hear the issue in the mothers.

[gold]

Do the bad ones look any different under the microscope than the good ones?

[mossboss]

In that case it points to bad PVC. That should be as a first port of call. Not enough plasticiser or tin In The material to block out crystalline boundaries
Get good records crush them up and press a few out of the regrind on the same noisy stampers
That will indicate bad material if records are quite on regrind, if the noise is still there than you moulds have build up scale from calcium or other Impurities in the cooing system or even rust preventing even heat distribution across the face of the moulds, both heating and cooling causing noisy records
That's assuming that all conditions are right like steam and hydraulic pressures, I am sure their are as it is the first thing to check out.
Another quick way to check for scale in the galleries is to get some really high melting point grease and apply a thin coating at the back of the stampers than mount them in the presses
That so you get a better or a good interface between stamper and mould which should lessen the noise not necessarily eliminate the noise but it should be far less, if that is the case than you have nailed the issue, assuming that's the case than you need to descale the moulds which is not a big deal just time consuming
Let us know how you get on
You can pm if you want recipe for descaling solution
Cheers

[concretecowboy71]

No Paul. I have not seen any of the test pressings yet. I will try to get some this week and take a look.

[mossboss]

Concrete man, you can look as much as you like, it ain't going to fix the problem
You need to lock it down in the pressing plant, of course, that is assuming that the positives and lacquers are quite
And by the way, with all due respect, the test cut will tell you a lot, but one can never be certain that the cut is 100% clean despite the test cut being perfect.
Dozens of recuts ain't good at all for clients, the cutter or the pressing plant, that's for sure
Cheers
C.

[concretecowboy71]

Mossman...we like your advice but after talking with the pressing plant, they used the same PVC with older/proven stampers and had no problems. That is one reason they have eliminated the PVC as the problem.

I know what you mean that the test are not 100% accurate...nothing in this business is!

I am wondering more than anything if this is a localized problem or spread across more than one plant/region.

Thanks for the input.

[mossboss]

If PVC issues have been eliminated than one has to look at the source
Ask for the positives as well as the lacquers from the plating shop play the lacquer back on the vms ab it to the source material compare the levels as well as any extraneous noise
Than play back the positive by placing a fairly heavy piece of steel ring in the centre of the positive so as to keep it flat on the platter
Spray some distilled water on the face of the stamper to act as a lubricant if you playback stylus is not diamond even if it is its a good idea any way, ab it to the lacquer
If it is on the positive and not on the lacquer it points to a few things, either bad silvering, which had gone Goldie in colour when applied, patchy passivation on the negative, or a crystalline nickel deposit on the stamper, caused by the above.
So instead of looking at the pressings it may be worthwhile to compare the stampers good ones to trouble some ones, it is far better to see the positives under the scope on the vms but you can start with the stampers as you would have them there at the plant
Look for undulations in the ridge of the stampers if there is anything like above they will be there
If the plating shop does send you the positives make sure they are stripped off before hand
Accepting the fact that nothing is 100% in this game one can narrow down the source of the problem even though much to our chagrin it is after the event
Cheers

[montalbano]

Are you sure that the positives are OK? I mean do you have listened with your ears?
Anyway:
If the noise comes only in the pressed records, and there is no PVC issue, the only reason can be the temperature of the moulds during the pressing. Cold spots in the moulds / cold parts of the puck which result in occasional areas of non-fill in the records. Normally you can see this with your eyes, if you carefully look the record, or you can use one of that special lamps, I don't remember their name.
Non fill is very rare (unless it's generated by bad moulds) if records are pressed on Lened, Hamilton or SMT machines, because their extruders make a very compact puck. The pucks coming from an Alpha Toolex extruder tend to have a slight flash in the bottom, and this material cools down faster than the rest of the puck. If the moulds aren't fast enough, or the steam pressure is not enough to compensate this difference of temp, you will have non fill. Please note that the non fill strongly depends on the depth of the grooves of the record. It is hard to have non fill with grooves which are 50-60 micron wide; it is much more possible with grooves 80-100 micron wide.
If the noise is also in the positives, then we have experienced the same problem 1.5 years ago, for about 2 weeks, and I can tell you what we have done; of course we have everything under the same roof, so it is rather easy for us to check where the problems come from, and it is not said that the solution we found is the same solution of the plating shop where they come from.
Most of the noise was originated by the silvering, so first we had changed the degreasing solution but it didn't work. Then we have changed the water, at the time we used that columns with filters to clean the water, so we decided to eliminate them and we changed to pure distilled water, bought in tanks of 1000lt - and it turned out to be less expensive too. Finally, we completely cleaned the bins of the silvering machine: all of the bins, and especially the bin where the silver nithrate solution is, with hydrogen peroxyd and ammonia, several times, until all the muds vanished. Since then, this has become a standard procedure we do weekly. Plus, we have put an absolute filter in the compressed air line. Finally, and this is regarding the press shop, we decided to put a thin layer SIDOL on the stampers just before the 1st pressing is done. You let it dry with the steam, it vanishes after 3-4 records and takes away most of the leftover impurities. And we finally solved the problems.
One more thing: later on, for some days, we also happened to encounter white noise or anyway excessive background noise, and continuous, both in lacquers cut in-house and in lacquers supplied from elsewhere. The funny thing was that the lacquer itself wasn't that noisy when checked with the VMS, but the positive and the records were, especially in the lead-in groove. You had noise in the lead in groove, then when the TIME light went off and the machine changed the groove depth, the noise vanished. It turned out that all those sides had all been cut with Adamant styluses, from the same lot. Transco UK credited us for 2 styluses at that time, and later on a friend here (freelance cutter) was telling me that he still was having problems with Adamant. I couldn't tell whether they have solved the problem or not, because since then we changed to Transco 320 and I have to tell you that we never had a problem with those styluses. Clean cuts, crisp and clean high frequencies.
I hope this can help you somehow.
Cheers from the Bel Paese

[concretecowboy71]

I finally got some of the test pressings. Under the scope, they have some flaws. As you spin the pressing under the scope, you see sections where the groove wall "disappears" or gets very faint. I checked known good records and this does not happen. We are in the process of getting mothers and the original lacquers.

Here are some pics.


static groove by concretecowboy71, on Flickr
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static groove2 by concretecowboy71, on Flickr

[Aussie0zborn]

Clint, this is non-fill and is not uncommon for the reasons Phil outlined above. Another reason is the combination of groove depth / speed of the ram / temperature of the vinyl puck / moulding tiime. If the vinyl is too soft and the ram too fast, the vinyl flows straight out to the edges without filling each nook and cranny of the groove. If groove depth is the issue then the ram speed / moulding time needs to be adjusted.

Did you say other stampers on that same press produce good records?

[concretecowboy71]

Yes, that is true. They have gotten pretty good at tuning non-fill out and they used proven stampers to get good results. That is why we are puzzled.

[mossboss]

This is not non-fill, this is stitching, non fill is in patchy areas not along the groove length
That's why is called stitching like a sewing machine that misses the stitch
Cheers

[leo gonzalez]

how about stylus.
have you tried with a new one?

[concretecowboy71]

Yes, been changed several times.

[mossboss]

This thread is quite interesting
The cutters think like cutters
The pressing man thinks like a pressing man
it seems that Kiplings phrase may be appropriate here
"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet"
By the way, any Ideas or conclusions at your end so far?
Cheers

[Aussie0zborn]

Back in the day, "stitching" was a second imprint of the groove caused by bad release of the pressing from the stamper. This occurred on the Alpha Toolex semi-automatic presses when a return spring on the bottom platen was broken.

As with anything in this game, one word can have two meanings.

[concretecowboy71]

I have been hearing more and more about this noise issue from cutters who do not post here. Anybody caught up in this? Over 25 albums worth of recuts and still coming.

[dietrich10]

clint when are the first issues from?
I had a few issues back in mid summer and all good now