The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Wow! How are you making the cutting stylus and how long can it cut for?

Little update - it's a nightmare! I think my downfall is the springs. I can probably upload some of my CAD drawings if anyone is interested. Everything is scaled from disassembly photos - if anyone could share the read dimensions of the armature etc, that'd be pretty helpful - making the torque spri...

I would love to hear a sample of Biden swearing!

I've got a friend who works with recycled plastic and he's very keen to give it a try. It looks like so much work though!

NB; The material used for blanks as sold by Souri and Myshank seem to be of a somewhat softer material than pressed vinyls. Which may mean all written in the texts in the link may not fully or at all apply to the blanks we're using, colored or black. Which also raises the question who's actually ma...

Hey thanks Estrada, that video is a great reminder of where I've started from.

The record shop is called Ride On Super Sound and we're in the shop above Smash Palace on High Street...which I guess makes us the tallest record store in New Zealand?

Hey Estrada, I've kind of started again, there are a couple of topics; https://www.lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=8775 Which is my current overhead design with turntable and https://www.lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=8851 Which is the Presto clone I'm trying to build. The current Presto ...

I finally got this assembled this weekend. I haven't used omega springs, I still think this will require some experimentation. Hoping to test it out in the following week. When I began milling this, I decided to leave quite a large margin for error as I had never milled anything before. Now it's ass...

So I've been using this as a bit of machining practice with the mill I bought over lockdown. I drew up the design in CAD over the last 18 months from pausing a lot of YouTube videos and reading a lot on here. Back plate/knife holder/spring holder is aluminium, pole pieces/magnet clamps/armsture are ...

Check out my JE-98D topic. I went with a big heavy steel platter driven via belt with an integrated servo and square wave generator. The platter and pulley is terribly machined but the big heavy platter seems to smooth everything out. - Bryan has done something similar with his Fairchild.

I went the path of constructing my own, mainly because I wanted multiple turntables. If you've got the machinery/skills/contacts it works out cheaper and gives you more torque. I started by reading Bryans Fairchild Restoration project. It's reasonably cheap to get a heavy steel platter made, the hea...

I've written a circuit protection program in arduino, it takes 500 samples and averages them giving a sort of RMS value, then displays that on an ammeter and controls a relay to cut the signal if the current gets too high, then there is a little reset button to reset the fuse. Hardware wise it's jus...

This is great.

It was recommended and fitted by a local engineer I was doing some work for - it's a rubber and plastic mesh, with a heat welded join. I know another local guy is just gluing his together for playback machines. There's a crown machined into the pulley so it stays on the platter, but it seems to run ...

This is the product of about 3 years of experimentations and failings. - I ended up opening a small record store with some friends a couple of years ago and the idea was always that I would design and build a self-service embossing lathe for it. After many revisions this is the first machine I've de...

I'll post here cause I just got my 4887 working...I think, not sure if its back to where it originally was as I bought it in the same condition as yours. I had a friend mill a brass plate for it, same dimensions as the thin plate, modeled off what I could see from photos of other 4887's posted here....

Hi, I've recently purchased a RCA MI-4887 Cutting head, The armature was not sitting at a right angle from the head, I opened it up and it seems that to only have a brass spring which holds the armature to a knife edge. I've had a look through some of Todd/opcode's youtube cutting head repair videos...

It's this stuff here; https://www.crc.co.nz/556/6895-b16373ef-5a27-4f69-bf8c-d7fe252ae6ed/

I was having a think about fluids used for cutting, I've never tried lighter fluid (naptha?) But I have had success with CRC, when I spoke to P. King he said the CRC was to remove the adhesive layer from the record blank. While CRC does work well for me, it has the habit of leaving a greasy residue....

I take it that is ground with two flats and still .5mm tungsten?

How did the boron go?