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With recent advances in 3D printing, is there any hope for a home vinyl record press? How much would it cost to cut my own vinyl? (google fails me: [1]) I kno

by arh68 12y ago

With recent advances in 3D printing, is there any hope for a home vinyl record press? How much would it cost to cut my own vinyl? (google fails me: [1]) I know very little about the logistics of record pressing. [1] http://www.vinylrecorder.com/diamant.html http://www.vinylrecorder.com/diamant.html

mojuba 12y ago
You will need an atom-scale resolution printer for the the record to sound good really. Or a few atoms :) Even for digital records being transferred to vinyl, the track is circular, so yes, atom-scale printing would be your best bet.
leoedin 12y ago
There is software which will generate the 3D model required from a sound file. There have been records 3D printed [1], but the quality is much, much worse than an actual record. [1]: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129971-vinyl-records-are-far-from-dead-now-you-can-3d-print-your-own http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129971-vinyl-records-are-far... The stylus size on an LP is something like 2.5 thousandths of an inch, or about 63.5 um. The printer used in the link above (an Objet500 Connex) has a minimum layer thickness of 16 um. The article talks about 600 DPI, which may be a horizontal resolution? That works out at around 42 um. The Objet website just gives a minimum resolution of 16 um. Either way, when you look on the scale of the needle your groove is going to have a lot of hysteresis - essentially appearing very blocky. The high frequency sound components are going to be lost completely. There will obviously be improvements on resolution. The problem is that to build something which can accurately make records with high frequency sounds (perhaps 15kHz), you need to build it to very high tolerances. It's very hard to make those sort of tolerances cheap. Some low cost 3D printers have been made which use UV light to cure epoxy resin layer by layer. The 2D resolution of those technologies is dependent on the resolution of the UV projector rather than the mechanical tolerances of the rails and extruder, so there's a lot more potential for high resolution prints there. The Z direction is still dependent on mechanical movement though.
ryandetzel 12y ago
How would you get the data to the record..through the digital Internet? ;-)

by arh68 12y ago

mojuba 12y ago

You will need an atom-scale resolution printer for the the record to sound good really. Or a few atoms :) Even for digital records being transferred to vinyl, the track is circular, so yes, atom-scale printing would be your best bet.

leoedin 12y ago

There is software which will generate the 3D model required from a sound file. There have been records 3D printed [1], but the quality is much, much worse than an actual record. [1]: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129971-vinyl-records-are-far-from-dead-now-you-can-3d-print-your-own http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129971-vinyl-records-are-far... The stylus size on an LP is something like 2.5 thousandths of an inch, or about 63.5 um. The printer used in the link above (an Objet500 Connex) has a minimum layer thickness of 16 um. The article talks about 600 DPI, which may be a horizontal resolution? That works out at around 42 um. The Objet website just gives a minimum resolution of 16 um. Either way, when you look on the scale of the needle your groove is going to have a lot of hysteresis - essentially appearing very blocky. The high frequency sound components are going to be lost completely. There will obviously be improvements on resolution. The problem is that to build something which can accurately make records with high frequency sounds (perhaps 15kHz), you need to build it to very high tolerances. It's very hard to make those sort of tolerances cheap. Some low cost 3D printers have been made which use UV light to cure epoxy resin layer by layer. The 2D resolution of those technologies is dependent on the resolution of the UV projector rather than the mechanical tolerances of the rails and extruder, so there's a lot more potential for high resolution prints there. The Z direction is still dependent on mechanical movement though.

ryandetzel 12y ago

How would you get the data to the record..through the digital Internet? ;-)