Vinyl Record Pressing Plants The raise of the Pheonix and back to ashes?

[mossboss]

Farmersplow
It is not easy in any manufacturing process as you well know, Vinyl record production is no different, Automotive production repairs etc is a well established activity worldwide where there is an abundance of knowledge available information on any and every aspect for almost all brands and makes of autos
Since its inception the phonograph manufacturing industry was a close shop,that was in every aspect from cutting all the way to pressing, hardly any information outside a plant was shared, In actual fact some plants even restricted people from wandering about from one section to another
Philips was notorious for that in particular their plating section, EMI was also very protective, In actual fact pressing equipment in the USA was sold to majors with very few outsiders having access to new gear
Once the industry vanished a few brave people either got some old gear and fired them up some where legacy plants from the old days but none of the majors stayed in the game
Last new presses sold was circa 1980-1982 and than the press manufacturers also pulled up stumps so the knowledge base just about dissipated with people going into other jobs, Now that's 40 odd years ago so here we have it, old timers are dropping of some are still around but not many
New press manufacturers have come into play but there is nothing there as a substantial improvement of the process apart from modern pneumatic hydraulic and electronic control, we are still at 25-30 second cycle times which we had back in the 70's, attempts to Injection mould them with great effort recently did not bare any fruit either, with the prototype in production I believe, that was funded partly by people in the game, it fared no different than attempts in the 70's to do the same
So the new guys expecting miracles or success are finding out it ain't that simple or easy there is a general lack of established knowledge base out there, resulting what we see, besides, the reduction in orders worldwide which started not much after the lock-downs, post covid has not helped
Time will tell what the industry will be this time next year and the year after that and so on
"That's the Vinyl Truth"
Best

[farmersplow]

mossboss
You're right of course, the automotive industry is worldwide knowledge and vinyl record production is a niche with a lot of lost knowledge. (In the automotive industry today, almost nobody can develop or repair a carburetor cost-effectively, despite the instructions).
Factory secrets are a valuable asset. A lot is done to preserve and secure it. As in any trade, the experience of employees is an equally expensive commodity. Nevertheless, long-serving employees with extensive experience are often not brought back for cost reasons and younger employees without experience but at lower costs are deployed. Vast amounts of knowledge are lost.

[mossboss]

Sure We older ppl know about the loss of knowledge, Running a couple of older cars like a V12 jag and a 6 cylinder 4.2 E types certainly sharpens your skills in carb tuning, 3 SU's on one and 4 Strombergs on the V12 at my age carbys are second nature having grown up with them Young mechanics, Ha WTF is this? where do you plug the computer? don't bother, to hard to long and in a way not necessary
Does not apply to phonograph record manufacturing One needs to have a broad range of knowledge to be successful, simple as that
Any way I think we have exhausted this topic so may be its time that we move on to other more interesting matters, of course if ppl are to make comments here, well, why not
Best

[armshouse]

Since we don't have a separate thread going to compile plant closures I guess I will post this news here. One more plant down in the US, this time The Vinyl Lab in Nashville. They have been very active in the pressing community in the US, the VRMA, Making Vinyl, etc and most recently announced that they had purchased the plating business from Welcome to 1979. The plating business didn't get off the ground and now the whole thing is closing.

https://wpln.org/post/the-vinyl-lab-an-independent-vinyl-manufacturing-plant-in-nashville-is-closing/

[untitledthe]

Very unfortunate, looked so promising with the purchase of the plating business.

[mossboss]

Well not surprising really we have already covered that in some way in the thread, buying a plating facility is one thing, getting a result out of it its another,
I don't know but i can suggest to you that the sellers said its a walk in the park!
The buyers found out it Ain't, it takes years of exposure experience as well as a bit of black art to make metal work for records, where did that go? arghhhh with the sale of a bunch of baths and chemicals plus some DC power supplies that goes with it?
Dublin Vinyl recently going bust, Fantastic galvanic setup! lots of money spent on it, I saw the 1000 L IBC's full of Nickel sulfamate something like 4 or 5 of them at around $20 per L figure it out, of course that's plus a basketful of Nickel pellets like 50KG per basket at around the $30-35 Per KG they had ten cells about half a tonne of nickel in there
The resultant work was mostly rubbish so they shut it down!! long before they plant went bust, so getting plating happening is a plus but it can also be a curse that will bring you down real fast as it takes a few hours to get the metal work to test pressing stage,
Press it check it than if not up to the expected result start again, that alone will send one bust, delays for the client another cut another few days repeat
Not a good plan
Want to be in this game? better get your shit together and have your ducks lined up FIRST
After all these years like 15+ doing metal work we still get a curved ball every now and than, that has us stumped for answers, that's how it is
If you want to invest in new plating gear there are people out there to take your money and supply you with whatever is required, that's the easy part,
Now get a consistent result out of that gear there is the challenge, at the first point of trouble guess what? they will tell you talk to your chemical supplier!
That's fine you do that, than you have a few days of to and thro and a decent consulting bill, but without any tangible results, you are facing a hard road ahead, than again thats the game we are in, it is what it is don't have the expertise yourself or in house it is a hard act to follow
Best

[SONARC]

I've been following this thread for a while, and although I'm not involved with pressing plants, it seems to me that a lot of what has been cited as points of failure in that industry could be applicable in the field of DIY lathe cutters as well.

I'm retired, and have been making small runs of hand-made lathe-cut records since 2016; and the only real misgivings I've fumbled with are:
1) that I didn't understand much earlier in my life this was something I could be doing, and
2) not having a partner in this

From my perspective, it kind of seems like everyone wants to be a lone wolf, rather than collaborate.

Tangentially, my other gig is collecting and selling used vinyl, and the ironic thing there is that I can make a steady stream of income selling records that other dealers don't know what to do with, because I have the sense of history behind the music, and I'm willing to put in the extra effort. I mean, I've literally been told by other folks in both fields that the way I run my business is "too much work". I guess I don't see it that way, because I love what I do, and I'm not cashing in a trend, like the so-called "vinyl resurgence", which is news to me, having been a collector for more than forty-odd years.

But I digress. And I do not mean to de-rail the conversation here. But I sometimes have to speculate that not everyone is getting into all of this for the right reason. Trends come and go. I attended a vinyl conference about a year ago that really opened my eyes as to how out of place I was in the current record industry, with regards to both retail and manufacturing. And I'm glad about that, because many (if not most) of the people I met there only seemed to see dollar signs as a measure of success, and that's definitely not the kind of company I want to keep. I would really love to see more folks willing to throw their lot together and build some real community, rather than more individuals saying, "Look at me!" Just a thought, that I reckoned might have some relevance in this.

[llary]

To expand on what mossboss has said we purchased a plating system from the same company as 1979/The Vinyl Lab. I will keep it vague as I am not looking to name and shame but I can understand why they may have struggled with the plating. We had to make extensive modifications to the system we were sold as turnkey, to the point that the only remaining OEM parts are the physical polypropylene baths. To be fair the company did their best to help but electroforming record stampers is a very niche thing and you either need a lot of time to learn, or help from people with specific know how. If I did it all over again I would have just built our own system from scratch but you know what they say about hindsight. The most crucial part of our eventual success in plating has been the people we have on board, both some really excellent in house engineers and a handful of external consultants.

[Lupu]

I hear you about plating. Most of the start up pressing plants have outsourced it for these valid reasons.

But to be on the positive side, I must add that a well known EU based provider of electroforming equipment has also successfully trained several completely newcomer operations to produce steady flow of decent quality stampers. I don't know what happened at Dublin Vinyl but that must be an exception.

Electroforming was invented in 1838 almost 200 years ago. You can read everything about it from books written in the 1950s. Or study a degree at the local university of applied sciences. Of course nobody masters it 100% every time, all the time. But at least for my colleague who has 20 year experience in plating of which last 10 years electroforming nickel (previously in other line of industry), calling it "black art" seems a bit of an exaggeration.

[mossboss]

Sure there are a host of exceptions in any game I suppose all the plants that go bust are exceptions as well since a lot are still running,
You are correct of course that one can be trained in any manufacturing discipline matrix production is no different, it is when things go haywire that the mettle of whoever is running the show are shown up
I wonder if you ever done it as a job? I doubt it else you wouldn't be taking the "Black Art" bit so lightly,
The electroforming equipment manufacturers are fine they know what happens and what is required for a successful operation of their gear, they recommend a supplier who is familiar with the process than if all is as recommended there shouldn't be any problems at all
If there is an issue they check their gear out first, after all it is a filtering system and a DC power supply, their gear is fine, than guess what?
They send you back to the chemical supply ppl to sort out,
Guess what they will do they will sort it out!!
Do a carbon treatment for that you got to get the PH and temp up Do a permanganate Treatment Add the Peroxide than heat up the Liquid to 58-59 C do that than cool it all down adjust all the parameters try it out! Success Great, but a week plus more or so is gone
No success Mmmm OK Than they say Now Get rid of all the chemicals and start again!!!
No problem!! so 4 cells= 800 L of nickel Sulfamate x EUR say 10 /L = 8K another 200 odd for bits and bobs plus another EUR of say 2K to dispose of the old liquid
Than dummy plate the baths Recommended is 10 amps per litre at around 1.5 V that's about 8000 Amps to run through the liquid at the lowest amp rate so a week later you have taken out all the impurities and you are good to go back in production and you do
Easy yes? The guy is trained he has done well all is fine
Down about EURO 10 K down at least a week most likely two plus weeks out of production say another 5-10K, problem is solved back in bis Ha
That's where the Black art is my good man, even that, it fails, that's when you get the dreaded worms!! ha ha So go figure, There is an interesting forum called Finishing.com maybe you ought to take look at the various questions raised there for a process that's two hundred years old, its interesting
Best