Project : Diamond stylus for lacquers

[The Shank]

Hey all,

'Cause wanted to share that little project I've been thinking since few months, I had to post that here because
I'm looking for some informations some of you certainly have. We're not specialized with sapphire or even rubin, but for
us, a geometry can be applied to any stones.
Even if it's not a priority, that new challenge can be very interesting and we would be very happy to get success with the new tool and,
not a little bit
Sure it won't be done as speed as we would like, but we can try many possibility.

Indeed I've read here, and do not remember where exactly, JVC in the 80' made a Diamond
stylus for lacquers

Apparently those stylus were working like a charm. I've already made some but not really good : geometry and groove cut problem

By travelling to Flo 3 years ago, we made test. We get some grey grooves. Noise was really good. Succion was creating some issues.
Instead of going into the tube, the chip was not regular and wasn't going where it has to. Apparently, the stylus from the 80' get
trough a kind of coating. This is where our knowledge reach the limits with that. The static problem between the acetate and diamond
can be the source of the problem. Diamond contains static charges that are released when in contact with other materials.
HPHT coating can solve the problem but what kind of coating is needed?

What we would need now : A sapphire or Rubin stylus wich is new but has some problem. I mean, after the first cut you observed something wrong.
We have here some new stylus, never cut, from Neumann made in the 80' (not for sale, they just here to be updated). So I would be able to compare the difference and discover why it's not working properly... Geometry? Finition?
Of course if one of you still has a such diamond tool, this is just an amazing opportunity to open the door again...
If some of you had an experience with a such stylus.... It would help a lot too.
We have the technologie to make micron facets with very high precision, so we can maybe move forward to that new project with your help.
Any suggestion is welcome.
We won't be able to make mass production... I prefer to be very clear. We do not that for business. If there is any success with that, we will see what we can do.

[Phinster]

Apparently JVC used a laser to shape the burnishing facets

[The Shank]

You have any source for that? Laser is definitely not clean on diamonds...even in 2018

[Phinster]

I was at RCA and back in the day we used a couple of them. I recall someone saying that, can't remember who.

Your probably right, just hearsay I guess...............

[The Shank]

Why the production has been stopped?
Any idea where I could get one of these?

For the sapphire stylus it's ok, someone already proposed one to us.

[Phinster]

JVC stopped because CD's started to happen and there were hellish problems with the heater wires.

Diamond is a poor conductor of heat and we had to use 0.7 amp minimum to get a quiet cut, Over time the wires
weakened and split. The most time we ever got was 35 hours before this happened. Probably should have got
at least 200 hours!

I doubt very much you would find one as they were all returned to JVC eventually

[The Shank]

Ok, but I don't think that will be the most difficult part of the trick

[The Shank]

Here is the first batch of pictures of a Neumann Stylus from the 80'

Picture from side, mirror face, front facet. From x100 to x2000 Nomarski mode
Minor defect on the surface of the mirror face but with 0% incidence on a cut.
No visual defect on the micron facets (few scratch almost not visible to x2000)
Perfect edges.

[mossboss]

There was a Japanese patent on the diamond stylus for lacquer. Do a search for it. If I remember rightly it had a .0001 gold wire embedded at the back in contact with the lacquer to ground the static electricity generated to ground. It had 3 wires two for heater one to ground the static. I am sure a serious search will dig it up. Seen one never used it. Adamant who are still in bussiness will most likely have information on them even cut them for the inventors. It was fairly late around the early 80's so it never made it the market in any significant qty's heaters was not an issue static was.
Best

[The Shank]

There was a Japanese patent on the diamond stylus for lacquer. Do a search for it. If I remember rightly it had a .0001 gold wire embedded at the back in contact with the lacquer to ground the static electricity generated to ground. It had 3 wires two for heater one to ground the static. I am sure a serious search will dig it up. Seen one never used it. Adamant who are still in bussiness will most likely have information on them even cut them for the inventors. It was fairly late around the early 80's so it never made it the market in any significant qty's heaters was not an issue static was.
Best

Thanks for your message. But if you have a link that would be great... Can't find anything.

[juba bc]

I'm bad in English, but here it seems to say something about static in diamonds cutting lacquer
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4105213

[mossboss]

Juba has a good link also referencing a whole lot of other patents. take a look. Best.

[Vice Fiori]

i dont see gold mentioned on stylus patent, even laser cut to shape the stylus, what i see is a every/some methods to avoid static, on then we have:

1-add a thin sapphire foil on mirror surface start on metal and until the face and let the cut part free, so the chip going to touch this sapphire surface, not the diamond, and the chip running free without static.

2-add a metal surface on almost part of diamont, let only the cut part free, with still the sapphire thin foil (something like optional this part)

3-I dont get this right, but something like a corundum core inside, maybe im wrong? maybe to avoid to much diamond on entire stylus and as corundumis a mineral stone with hardest nine and this base is aluminium oxide, can be hard, let diamond do the job and at same time not compromise the cut, less cost and avoid even mor static?

4-use LASER CUT to make a little hole on the middle of surface diamond, close to the tip and cut place, and insert a little piece of sapphire, to make something like the effect of the sapphire foil and even avoid the total static charge around the diamond (think in this method the sapphire thin foil still there, to make contact with this sapphire insertion and avoid even more static accumulated charges.

hm, interesting things, something like a static ground option for every static, think it even can help with plastic cuts? maybe only envolve thin foil metal on diamont (not the cut part) can help even more as wax and clean solution?

I dont know every about, only shank to do this answer right

[mossboss]

There were quite a number of patents on that. Also a few white papers Keep looking you dig them out.

[grooveguy]

I sometimes feel that I have a bit of an advantage, having been active in disc recording as far back as the 1950s. Yes, I am a real person and, yes, I am really alive. (Today is Wednesday, April 4.)

The best styli I have ever used were Capps "BB" (barely burnished) sapphire styli. About this same time, Micropoint came onto the scene, but theirs were not as good as the Capps.

But a 'dark horse' appeared on the horizon, the Ogura Jewel Bearing Co. of Japan. They wanted into the market in a bad way, and would even communicate (by surface mail!) with a teenage kid in California. I received a couple of samples from them and was blown away by the quality of the (mono) recordings I was able to obtain with my Presto 1D head on an RCA lathe. These guys still seem to be in business, although they no longer mention disc recording. Perhaps someone should poll them on their past achievements.

[audiosteam]

I've been digging into patents lately. I found this one (54-130001) about treating "the mirror face of a diamond cutting stylus through ion implantation" for changing the stylus conductivity.
The original patents are in Japanese only. But there's a kind of google translation too.. Anyone interested would get a proper one. I don't remember reading about this one before, pardon me if it was already posted before.

[The Shank]

Nice update.

We've made a lot of progress here.

Last thing to solve is heating.... Stylus has been tested and it will work.

[audiosteam]

But a 'dark horse' appeared on the horizon, the Ogura Jewel Bearing Co. of Japan. They wanted into the market in a bad way, and would even communicate (by surface mail!) with a teenage kid in California. I received a couple of samples from them and was blown away by the quality of the (mono) recordings I was able to obtain with my Presto 1D head on an RCA lathe.

Inreresting story, well it seems that you were lucky enough to get samples. Ogura says that they didn't got to sell commercial stylii as their "test sample quality was not accepted by a domestic customer in Japan".

From a recent email they confirm that they "will be able to manufacture ones with excellent quality near future".

[grooveguy]

"will be able to manufacture ones with excellent quality near future."??? ...only about 50 years too late! I'm surprised that, given the shrunken marketplace for disc mastering styli, they'd consider getting back to this. Perhaps there's sufficient 'botique' call, and with the demise of US-based manufacturers, who knows? We'll stay tuned, please post any additional information you might get. Thanks!

[The Shank]

Lovers gonna love, haters gonna hate

After weeks of research and developments and ending them with drastic test, I’m happy to announce we had success in making diamond stylus for lacquers

Here is some specs :
4 microns facets
4 microns radius tip
Heating : from 400 to 600 mA
Test made with : Sx74 - Sal74 - VMS70
Lacquers : MDC - TRANSCO (results are a bit differents)
Cutting Studio : DK Mastering Paris
Pressing plant : MPO FRANCE
Stylus life expected : from 900 to 2500 hours
Price : ? (No question yet please, need to get all parameters)

First impression was we had some suction issue, we had to reduce the distance of the tube and the suction’s power (stronger)
I’m not happy with this but it’s a detail today that will be solved very soon (I have the solution).
With regular suction tube and power we had a problem of a kind of sticky chip, not due to the static (it has been solved already) but more from a too « fat » chip : yes, we had 1 more dB compared to sapphire or rubin stylus. But here again, the solution is already founded.
We had to cut for about 1 or 2 hours to have the stylus more stable than the first cut, seems a running in is necessary (all stylus tested did the same)
We have a better sound than regular stylus available today on the market.
Once experimentally fixed, no more problem and cut like a charm

We’ve decided after such results to release few products very soon in the nature when the last details will be solved (product is today 100% functional but need some tweaks to be 100% plug & cut)

we will also start a production with sapphire and rubin in few weeks to a lowest price possible to the highest quality

The better is to come in few weeks and it’s not about stylus, maybe the best news since the 80’ (more details to come)

Now, to give you an idea about our work, some pictures are following and later today
some sample sound will be uploaded with original file and Rip of the file, so you can compare.

Lovers gonna love that news for a best Vinyl Valentine’s day!


Diamond stylus



Grooves









Grooves under Nomarski mode x 200



Bottom of the groove x2000