Another Guy Trying to Cast Records

[oliver8bit]

Hi, my name is Adam

I just discovered that "How to Pirate a Vinyl" site a month ago and i want to use it in conjunction with my friend's record cutter. Right now my goal is to take a cut on plastic plates or Laserdisc (he can get a decent enough sound for the punk/noise stuff we're cutting) then make a negative of it and use that to make colored discs/picture discs/limited edition art releasea/etc.)

The silicone stuff they use in the article seems to be really good but I've been having less luck with casting materials themselves. My original idea was to buy old records for pennies apiece from thrift stores and melt them down into a liquid, then pour that into the mold. I have decided that will not work! Maybe there is a method you could use without having industrial equipment but I have put that idea on the backburner for now...

I've never used resin before a week ago but it's really cheap and I estimate if one got the process down you could pick up the supplies from Lowes and pour records at 50 cents apiece! At first I used it under bad conditions (did it on the porch when it was rainy & cold) and came out with really sticky records that would not play. But recently I had alot of success with using TONS of catalyst, leaving a space heater set at 70deg near the pours, etc. etc. I got one record to play well but I dropped it on the floor and it broke in half!

Does anyone have any advice they can lend? Maybe if i knew the physical properties (hardness, psi strength, etc) of high-quaslity vinyl records then we could simply emulate it with materials. Liquid plastics? Casting resin? Dental plaster?

thanks
Adam
www.supermadrigalbros.com

[Aussie0zborn]

OK this is interesting. Vinyl records dont melt into a liquid like other PVC compounds - the vinyl record is ground into small chips and then heated in an extruder to form a soft pattie which is then pressed under a pressure of 100 tons. The moulds in the record press are heated with steam with a pressure of up to 170psi but this can be as low as 140psi. So, this is not something you can do at home and so your process would not allow you to use vinyl. This is called compression moulding.

CDs are made with injection moulding but the polycarboante is heated to a very high temperature to the point where it drips and then forced into the mould cavity under very high pressure. Again, not something you can do at home.

DVDs are made with injection and compression mouldng. The polycarboante is injected into the mould cavity (as per CDs) and then the mould is given a little stroke (compression) to make sure the polycarbonate resin has filled the mould cavity fully so that all the pits are properly formed.

I dont have any suggestions as to what materials you could pour but I would say you are on the right track - pouring is probably the only way you could go. Let us know when you make your first record.

[buckettovsissors]

Wood glue works great, and is very flexable ,best brand is Ponal but others work good too. The only problem is that I have not had sucsess getting them perfectly flat, therefore they skip but they reproduce the music well, also im just using a record as a master and making negatives and playing them, I figure by doing this the sound is much better. I send in the music backwards to a vinyl cutting service that uses a vinyl recorder and then make negatives that play from the middle out but the music is "normal"
-theo

[oliver8bit]

I thought about trying Wood Glue at first but I was told it would always dry sticky. I think something like Mod Podge would be the ideal thing to use but it seems like everything dries tacky and the only way to get rid of it is with a sealant. I'm worried that will kill the sound tho. I suppose the tackiness goes away with time anyways..

What's your technique with the wood glue? Layer by layer? Did you use a release? Did you use the wood glue to make the molds or a rubbber?

I've been using the <a>silicone rubber Smooth-On stuff</a> and while it seems like it works nice (very durable stuff, easy to wash, a ridiculous amount of detail captured, and no bubbles). I've made a few records that play but the main problem I've been having is getting them level and the right thickness. I figured that if you poured a real thick record it would sound better than a thin one, yet the best sound I have gotten so far was from a super-thin record I poured in <a>Smooth-On 300 Liquid Plastic Compound</a>.

It actually played the whole thing without skipping - you cannot imagine how excited i was! The sound was pretty quiet but the surface noise was minimal with this material, id like to point out. The original was cut on a picnic plate and the mold made with Smooth-on platinum-cure silicone rubber. The plate plays nicely on any record players and at a good volume but anything copied from this molding method comes out much quieter. I think maybe the best way to do this is to make a really loud cut to preserve as much sound as possible.

It can definitely be done I'm just exploring all my materials options. The ideal is to make records that look cool, can be played on whatever thrift store record player you have laying around for 20-25 times, then just kept as a cool-looking art piece/artifact. Without killing the needle; if the record itself wears down that's fine with me as long as it gets a couple dozen plays before that. Any music released on this method would be available for free as MP3s in case audio fidelity is a concern.

I have alot more experimenting to do because any number of factors will affect the resulting sound. With the Smoothon 300 stuff I was stirring each component separately and then pouring them together and stirring for 3 minutes before i poured (and by that time it was making the container hot). I got far less bubbles by skipping that first step and stirring the two parts together for just 1 min. The records it puts out are playable about half an hour after pouring! Buying right from the supplier I estimate with this material you could pour 7" in any color you wanted for around 90 cents apiece. I havent tried out the Task 4 stuff yet.

The resin is a different story. I got some <a>Castin Craft Clear Polyester Resin</a> and basically its a toxic liquid that you add drops to catalyst to, which starts a chemical reaction that heats it up and eventually hardens the substance. It advises to use 15 drops of catalyst per 1/4" so I tried 15 drops, then 30, then 45, finally around 50-60 I got a good, solid strong cast that was about the size of a 7" record. This resin dried really tacky and they stick still to stuff (even though I poured them several weeks ago). A friend of mine told me to use Fiberglass resin because she never had any tackiness problems. I got some from Lowes for $14 for a 32ounce can. In my experience about 2ounces of a material will pour a 7" record and a gallon of this stuff is little over 30 dollars - theoretically you could pour custom records for less than 50 cents apiece. It did work better, demolding in around 2 hours or so as opposed to the other stuff's 6 or more, but still remained sticky. I should just cave in and buy some surface sealant but I havent yet because I'm too scared of covering up the groove (which is already going through quite a bit of abuse!!). The silicone rubber stuff I was using for the molds through all of this survived a LOT of abuse.

It seems simple; I mean, if you can cut a pretty good sounding mono recording on a plastic plate from Kroger's, you can make a record out of anything provided you duplicate the grooves. I suppose the biggest question I have right now is regarding the hardness of the material and the PSI strength. How hard is too hard? How hard will fuck up a needle? I have found that the typical record is "A 1 on Mohs scale of mineral hardness" but I've been having trouble figuring out what material will approach this...

Anyways sorry to write alot. I suppose I just needed to write all this down anyways to get it clear to myself what i had tried out! If anyone else has experimented with this stuff (and ive seen the older posts, which is why i wanted to post here) write what you've figured out!

ps. sorry its not actually about cutting

[oliver8bit]

i just played the fiberglass resin record and it came out just like the 300 plastic material, same amount of surface noise, etc. at first i was thinking because its a pretty thick cast (maybe 1/8" or more thick, whereas a 7" is really thin)... so maybe the surface noise is due to the record being thick. then again the plastic one sounds about the same and it much thinner so perhaps this has to do with the mold itself. at any rate the record is quiet and the surface noise is loud, so i was thinking maybe a louder cut would be ideal for this method? the frequency range reproduced was actually quite similar to the original...

has anyone tried it with the task 4 stuff? i just read on their site that it is "designed for molds up to 1/2" thick so perhaps that is the best material for the job.

but i dont want to give up my dreams of see-thru record dupes with custom inlaid picture disc graphics!

[harper]

"Emory also invented a new LP pressing process he called "microfusion." Instead of putting a biscuit of vinyl in the middle of the stamper and causing it to spread with the heat and the pressure, he would take vinyl powder and spread it all over the stamper. When the press came together, the vinyl didn't have to force its way sideways across the groove. He claimed the vinyl would adhere to the shape of the ridges better, and it would reduce wear on the stamper itself. His releases were extremely quiet. They were also a little softer than regular vinyl, so they wore out faster. The other distinguishing thing about them was that they were a deep red, or blue, with suspicious-looking flecks of black inside if you held them up to the light."

Cooks press fit in a kitchen ?

[isis]

I guess I'm in cause I can cook!