The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Hi lathe trolls, what materials have people successfully cut with the Astatic x-26? Plates? Lexan polycarbonate sheets, Plastics? Etc I’ve read that it may not be heavy enough for polycarbonate plastics. I’m troubleshooting an airline cutter rn and am not sure what material I should be cutting into....

Thanks again emorritt, those links are very helpful. I would say the sound from the head is distorted especially at high volumes. I'm going to start by replacing the wax capacitor. I only see one in there, right in the middle. It is a .1uf 200vdc. Is it ok to replace these with non polarized film ca...

You can run audio from an external amplifier into the head (though it may be 500 ohms, which means you have to have a vintage amp with 500 ohm tap or a stepdiwn transforner tp test it) and put a plastic solo cup up the needle and see if the music is coming out, but i can almost guarantee you its de...

The astatic crystal cutter head is most definitely dead. Those crystals dont last 80 years . The chances of your stylus still being good are next to zero if it is the one that has just been sitting on there from when you bought it. Your amp probably doesnt work correctly either. good to know, is th...

So I made my first cut from a song on the radio and it is nothing but noise/static. I can hear audible sounds through the head and the grooves look like a record but when I play it back nothing is at all like what I hear on the radio or head. I made a post in the newbie section to try to tackle this...

Hey y'all so I made my first cut on my Airline Cutter that has an Astatic x 26 crystal cutter head and it is nothing but static and noise. I recorded from the built in radio. I can hear the radio audibly playing through the cutting head itself so I assume it is not totally busted. There is no audibl...

Hey! I just came across the same unit here in Oakland and would love any tips you have for someone starting out on it!

Thanks for getting back emoritt! The closest lathe I was able to find to my unit is this Airline Recordio that sold on Reverb a while back: https://reverb.com/item/9932895-airline-recordio-1950s-record-cutter-lathe?show_sold=true Still haven't found the exact manual but I found one for a similar wil...

Also found a few diagrams inside

Hey y’all, I’m new here but thought maybe one of you more experienced cutters would know what this machine is so I could start researching it. There are no model names or numbers anywhere on it other than the astatic corp crystal cutter. Also there appears to be a loose piece of plastic where the cu...