Vacuuming those groove threads

[Steve E.]

How do you get the hair out of the way of your cutting stylus? And what's that stuff called, anyway?

[Amishman35]

I once saw a website that showed you how to build vacuum suction for a record cutter, I forgot where, but it involved using copper tubing hooked up to a shop vacuum and a jar which catches the swarf.

[harper]

<<im gonna try and make one soon>>>>
probbly use a handheld 'dustbuster' vacccume thingy...

figured the hardest part will be machineinnng the zone for the suck tube to hang out next to the chip/

for the water collector the idea is that you just have it fall down gravity style into water// like thru a mason jar .

[Steve E.]

Someone told me that you make a jar with two holes in it. The small tube runs from the cutting arm to a small hole in the jar. A bigger hole in the jar has a mesh screen on it, and the vacuum cleaner hose attaches to that hole.

Hi, Harper! I don't quite picture the water idea yet. Is it sort of like a water pipe? I wish it were easier to draw pictures on the internet.

[sirkut]

When I use mine, I generally guide the spree (modelling term when stretching plastic to be used as a antenna, etc on airplanes) with my hands and keep pulling gently while using a small makeup brush with really light bristles so it doesn't interrupt the cutting process.

[Perisphere]

Generally, the thread (aka chip or swarf) should throw to the spindle of the turntable. Early on, this was aided by an engineer drawing it to the spindle through the use of a chip brush. (This practice can be seen in a brief scene in the old Barbra Streisand film FUNNY GIRL.) I think one argument for inside-out cutters (like some Presto and Packard-Bell models) was that the cutter moved away from the expanding ball of chip as the recording progressed, reducing the likelihood of a part of the ball breaking away and then coming around behind the cutter, spoiling a recording in the process. The reason for the water in the jar is to reduce or eliminate the likelihood of static electricity igniting the chip. (I'm sure subtle changes in lacquer formulations over the years has made this less of a worry today than it was many years ago.) On cutting systems equipped with a suction system the hose is a cylindrical tube that flattens into an oval as it approaches the stylus from the rear....

[doug]

rainbow vacuum cleaner

[Steve E.]

"rainbow vacuum cleaner"

What's that?

[doug]

A Rainbow vacuum cleaner uses water to filter the dirt. The vacuum motor sits above the water, and the hose connects to side of the water 'tank'. Air is pulled through the hose, through the water, and through the vacuum mechanism. The water catches the dirt as it flows in.

Or at least that's how I remember it. I don't know if they're made anymore. Last one I saw was twenty or more years ago.

[motorino]

its a good system, i have a similar

a co2 fire extinguiser near the lathe its good too

other extinguisers arent good, a lot of dust

need good ventilation, for the co2......

[re]

i just use a can of air or a hairbrush to grab the excess as it spins to the center...seems to work? i cant picture this water technique for some reason

[ameisevinyl]

you could use something like this:



it works for me but there are better solutions...
the lady in the headshop, where i bought this one
went: "are you stoned, buddy?" when I told her that i need this
waterpipe for removing tiny "hairs" from my record cutting machine

I use a normal vacuum cleaner attached to it with a adjustable transformer
(ähm some kind of thing wher you can regulate the output voltage to the vacuum cleaner, light dimmers might also work)
..you dont have to run the vaccum cleaner on full power, it might result in noise on the plate...

you HAVE to use a heated style to get a good "chip" ...

better solution are aquarium vacuum pumps, they are more quite a friend of mine uses these and neumann also took some for their VMS82 as far as I know...

some experts say that waterfiltering is not always needed...you might get some bubbling sounds on the recordings...

biggest problem: what kinf of tubes hose to use?
i think silicone is the first choice, and small copper tubes near to the styli...

check it out
mart[/img]

[Steve E.]

That is so funny. Bong technology, my word. Thanks for all the cool posting, ameisevinyl!

[endleseries]

my current vacuum rig sucking the chip is way too loud. anyone know of a vacuum model that is quiet with enough power? people say that acquarium vacuums will do, but the ones we've tryed are too weak.

let me know about a specific one

thanks for the help

[grooveguy]

A lot of industrial vacuum 'pumps' are made by Lamb Electric. The word 'pumps' is in quotes because you definitely don't want a reciprocating-type of pump, and sure enough the vibrating aquarium pumps just don't move enough air.

The Lamb electric devices are multi-stage turbines and come in two general varieties. The most expensive, and almost never found, use an induction motor and are very quiet. Because strong induction motors are hard to make with speeds over about 1750 r.p.m., these Lamb units have 6 or 8 stages and take a good long while to get up to speed.

The other Lamb vacuums are sometimes found in shop-vacs. They use "universal" motors (with carbon brushes) and develop high no-load speeds. A 2- or 3-stage one of these is great (I use one on my Rek-O-Kut), but you must use them with care.

You don't have to move a lot of air when sucking chip. Once the vacuum goes down to a 1/4" nozzle, not a lot of air volume moves through. The motor, on the other hand, wants to move a lot of air to help keep itself cool. The best way to deal with this is to reduce the voltage to the motor so that you have just a bit more suction than you need to initially grab the chip once it's thrown off the stylus. What I did was to take a 35-volt filament transformer and wire the secondary in series with the AC feed to the motor. This subtracts 35 volts from the 115V mains, delivering about 80 volts to the motor. That seems to work great. I even put the motor in the same cabinet as the cutter by suspending it in a wooden box on springs. Quiet, vibration-free and... "it really SUCKS!"

I don't know how to post pictures on this group, but if someone can tell me how to upload them, all this becomes abundantly clear.

[dmills]

A small 'side channel blower' might be reasonable for this, and unlike a vacuum cleaner they usually do not rely on the suction air for motor cooling.

They come up from time to time on ebay.

The water jar thing is to reduce the possibility of a nitrocellulose fire in the swarf container, watch cinema paradisio sometime to find out why nitrocellulose fires are bad news.

Regards, Dan.

[grooveguy]

Thanks for that, Dan! I'd never heard of a side channel pump before, but, sure enough, eBay has scads of them, albeit at rather high comparative cost. A quick Web search disclosed what these devices are and how they are typically used. They produce very strong vacuums, evidently used extensively as the first stage in pulling-down high vacuum for industrial processes. Wikipedia allows as how they consume a good deal of power, however (a kilowatt was mentioned!), and probably make a lot of noise. But if they could be run at less than full speed, one of these might prove a Cadillac solution to the problem of swarf removal. Good to know, thanks for sharing.

[dmills]

Those are rather big examples, and you may be looking at 'roots blowers' instead (which are the usual first stage choice for speeding up pulling down large chambers). Side channel blowers come from the rather small (200W or so) up to the enormous (30kW!), so don't go for the first one you see!

I was thinking more in the line of a small AMETEK Windjammer or the like which should be available for under a hundred bucks and are pretty close to the same thing but much smaller and lower power. Some of these have a 0-10V speed control input which is handy. This is probably what I will go for when I get that far on with my project. Again, you see a wide range of prices on ebay, ignore the $500 stuff, someone is being silly.

There are some 'minijammers' on ebay for ~$20 or so that while they look attractive for this are brushless DC motors and lack the control electronics, not a huge deal, but slightly annoying to have to build. These might be a reasonable choice if your design chops are up to it.

Regards, Dan.

[grooveguy]

Right, Dan, thanks for the clarification. I've used both the 'Windjammer' and the smaller, brush-motor vacuums and have noted elsewhere here about their relative merits and notations for use. One thing I always got a kick out of was the concept of 'piping vacuum around' in a dental office complex. Doubtless somewhere in the bowels of the building is a big pump of some sort, with pipes going off to various offices. If vacuum consists of emptiness, or 'nothing,' how can you pipe it around? Of course what you are actually doing is pulling air from all those offices, but 'delivering vacuum' sounds so much more romantic somehow. Ideally one could simply extend a large hose upward to the reaches of outer space, which, as everyone knows, is one big vacuum. The earthbound end of the hose would then suck frantically until all of Earth's atmosphere would be sucked away forever. An insidious end to civilization, not unlike the "humane" 'high altitude' means of euthanizing unwanted puppies and kittens.

[dmills]

Vacuum is actually surprisingly difficult to pipe any distance, because once you get below a certain pressure the mean free path of the molecules becomes comparable to the diameter of your pipe and the flow becomes limited by collisions with the walls.

At that point there is effectively no pressure pushing particles into the pump, they have to drift in on their own, so putting a bigger pump on too small a line will NOT increase the speed once the pressure drops to the point the line is choking the flow.

Not that any dental suction has ever reached that level of course, but it is an issue in pumping down real vacuum systems and even such things as air conditioning plant where the gauge is often many meters of small bore hose from the system being pumped down.

This is (sort of) relevant to chip collection to the extent that a long small diameter hose will quickly become the limiting factor whatever pump you stick on the far end of it.

Physics is fun.

Regards, Dan.