The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

When you get to the point of making the U-shaped armature-balancing springs for a Presto 1D, I'd be interested in a set, plus a pair of 1D coils wound with flat wire. My record cutting has been on the backburner for two and a half years due to equipment failure and being tied up in other projects, a...

You're right, the suction tube in a professional system comes in from the back or side, flattened out, within about a centimeter of the cutting stylus. The suction you're using is too far away to pick up the chip. Also, a heated stylus doesn't do much until 250 or 300 mA; it usually has a "sweet spo...

Here are a couple of mine - one cut, one cast.

Interesting that you're using Princess Diana's funeral as a test audio source for an extended recording. I once cut a 16" microgroove transcription of the funeral to see if I could, and to test how long the suction system would run without clogging. Two 33-minute sides, back to back.

Another video from Canada Boy Vinyl - it looks like they've got their galvanics department up and running now. Let's see if this link works: http://bcove.me/jyqxzfr8

What I used to do to adjust the armature on mine: first back off and remove the rubber damping slugs and their holder entirely. Then unscrew and remove the magnet. With the magnet removed, you'll find two screws through the top of each polepiece - one holds the polepiece to the body, the other allow...

Is the armature centered between the polepieces? What condition are the damping cylinders in? Is the coil bobbin properly secured and not moving around on its own? If any of those are out of adjustment, the armature won't move well or at all. Once you do get the armature free and moving, you'll be a...

It's not just the bar, it's the armature, setscrew and the plate holding the bar in are identical.

That's interesting, it looks like a Fairchild 541A turned on its side.

I did experiments a couple of years ago with molding and casting records out of hard resin - the materials are super expensive and it's time-consuming to make, but since the fully cast resin has the same hardness as a construction hard-hat I wonder how well this would work? What is the Shore D hardn...

Oh hey, that's me! :D I use an old industrial vacuum cleaner motor, about 7 x 9 inches, run off a variac set to about 80% to pick up the chip and 60% for the rest of the side, pulling the chip into an old glass pickle jar. My crappy camera makes it sound louder than it really is. This picture is a d...

I went digging around for Scully-related patents and accidentally came across this lathe designed specifically to cut precision parallel grooves like in roulette records... patented in 1986 by Mattel? Yes, the toy company. :? This would be intriguing to see in action. https://www.google.com/patents/...

Mine is a former bicycle light battery charger that puts out 6.3VDC at 850 mA, run through a 5W or 10W pot with a heat sink attached and a small DC ammeter. It was dumb luck that it was just sitting around in my junk electronics pile, and has worked very well for the past sixteen years, aside from b...

I've tried using an advance ball on my Presto 1D, and had nothing but problems with it - it was too far ahead of the stylus and caused an uneven cut with out-of-phase clinking and chattering especially near the edge of the lacquer. Chip pickup and keeping the heating wires away from the advance ball...

I second what the others have said about burrs in the copper tubing. I've had the same problem, even with the largest copper tubing and latex hoses that would physically fit, and sanding them within an inch of their life. Burrs and static buildup were the number one cause of failed cuts for me. An i...

Something I'm curious about: Acme Vinyl out of Toronto, ON, Canada, shut its doors in 2006 or early 2007 - what happened to their equipment? Lathe, galvanics (maybe), presses... I'm assuming they were sold, but to whom, and where? Does anyone know?

They're not nearly powerful enough to vaporize a groove into anything. All they need enough juice to do is focus in to change a photoresistant dye layer between two layers of plastic. If you were find a laser powerful enough to carve into plastic, more than likely you'd wind up with a square-shaped ...

Has anyone done a serial number "roll call" of existing Scully lathes? This would be the place to do it. EJ Emmons, I know yours is #489, and Gus Elg has #611. So that's 2 of 122 so far.

Hmm - is it bent like the U-shaped springs near the bottom, or straight like the thicker wire just under the coil? In the Presto, the centering springs are held in by the adjustment screws - back them off and the springs fall right out. The straight wire that holds the armature against the knife-edg...

Back before Opcode66 made the Groove Graphics program, I used to plug a digital metronome into the cutting amp, set to 3/4 time at 100 beats per minute. I never did get it quite right on the Rek-O-Kut though, with the idler drive it was always a little fraction of a percent fast or slow, depending o...