The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

As a side note, I've been measuring the weight of my heads as they travel across the records - It seems some of my rails are out of parallel with the platter - Interestingly enough, the machine I have the most issues with skipping at the outside of 10/12" records has the most consistent weight acros...

My next design will be a similar armature and pole piece design, but I'm toying with the idea of designing the armature to allow for torsional flex, this should mean it's easier to set up and there are less parts to fail. One of the challenges will be fitting it into the existing case footprint, as ...

Hi GG! I embossed the track on a 10" record at 45 rpm - the pressed track is at 33rpm. I would say that the embossed track was closer to the 9" mark, whereas the pressed record is close to the 11" (second track on the album) I use bulk shellite as the lubricant (https://www.bunnings.co.nz/diggers-1l...

It's been awhile... I'm heading into production with this one - Hoping to have it for sale along with the stylus' soon. I've got cases on the way and the majority of parts are now all CNC cut. Only just got the final-ish version together tonight, so haven't had much of a play with the EQ - this is r...

If you want more volume, you can pull the stylus out of the holder a little more - I tend to measure how far the tip of the stylus is protruding, I sit at around 8mm, from the flat of the pole piece. There is a tradeoff though - The longer the shank protruding the louder the cut will be, but you wil...

I'm considering putting an order in for (quite a few) bulk precut 85mm labels. I've always used laser on glossy sticker paper for labels, but it crossed my mind that if I were to make blank labels available for sale with lathe cuts, printing/stamping/painting on glossy labels may become an issue. Is...

Is there a difference between weight measured with digital scales (raised to the same level as the blank) and the weight you read with a spring scale? I tried using a digital spring scale years ago, but found I could get my weight much more repeatable with digital lifted to the same height as the bl...

I've sent you a PM! I think the results I've had with mono cutting heads have certainly been better and more manageable than with the stereo builds I've done. My theory is that the extra stiffness of the assembly does lend itself well to the extra weight required for embossing. It does make me wonde...

This is incredible, but really highlighting the inadequacies in my turntable!

Guess it's good to give me something to work to!

Hey grooveguy! They're 1.5mm poylcarb blanks from PSP, in NZ (The same Peter King used!) And I'm making the stylus myself, based from eposlabs work with .5mm tungsten tips, though the geometry is a little different - I was intending to have available for sale at the end of Feb, but time has got away...

I was hoping to start selling these at the end of this month - Unfortunately I've put 5 models together and they all deviate from where I want them to be. I'm currently redesigning some parts (and looking a bit more closely at magnetic fields) Most of this was manually milled, but I'm going to be ge...

Cool, this is now sold/pending payment

I'll try and get the specs and samples for the other two together reasonably quickly...

Hey, I've upgraded from my previous cutting heads to a new Presto 1-D Design. I was going to keep these for posterity, but it's probably easier to sell them. Gauging interest at the moment. This is head #1 of 3. The below details are specific to this head only - The nature of the design of these hea...

This is another cut I've done... I'm really happy with it. I've got a grado red2 cartridge on the way, so hopefully that can illuminate more of what's going on and maybe give me the 'true' 10khz+ response, as I'm under the impression that my current cartridge starts falling at that upper range. I wa...

Just dropping in again to say how annoying the Silhouette Cameo 4 is.

I think it took me about 5 minutes to get one sheet of labels registering - maybe it's cause I keep re-tacking the matt...

Thanks Mark!

As always your help and advice has helped me massively!

I've got a couple of other projects I need to look into, but I would like to take the time to build more of these, perhaps with hand-wound coils and aluminium formers.

Thanks for re-uploading those photos Mark,

How long does this pressing process take from start to finish?

And I'd also love to hear an audio sample!

The majority of the tricky parts are laser cut steel. The rest of them are essentially just aluminium stock - the error I made early in was thinking that I would just mill everything into the correct shape. The aluminium parts are 15*10mm, 10*10mm and 3*50mm stock. It makes the whole process a lot e...

Interestingly enough, the other two heads ended up with a resonance around 7khz, they also have a much higher cutting level. I took the first one apart and it looks like the knife edge was out of alignment, adding stiffness to the system. I think I'm happier with the lower resonance as even though t...

I've made another attempt a Presto Clone. I run three machines, so made them in sets of three. The first two ended up with a resonant frequency of 7khz, this last one has hit 10khz...I'm still trying to figure out exactly why. I think it could be the tensioning of my springs, but needles to say, I'm...