speed? microscope, surface tension
Thanks for comments on the rcm. The wood is just pine and just tossed together still but if I find a motor and a vac motor that will fit in there I'll probably sand it and throw a coat of poly on there.
What's cool is it helped justify my Incra tablesaw fence
If I end up making another enclosure I'll try to justify my dovetail jig too while I'm at it.
"Look honey, all those tools practically paid for themselves in one project. I probably saved $450 building this record cleaning machine!" I'm sure we're all familiar w/ the various responses from our beloved loved ones.
There was this sort of ridge around the bottom of that turntable. It was just begging to be set inside of a frame like that. The wood frame is sort of squeezing together around the bottom 1" of the tt and holding it very firmly.
There were a zillion bread makers at the closest goodwill but I haven't made it back. From distant memory they move pretty darn slow.
Iirc someone somewhere said 18 rpm? What am I shooting for here? I'm still whirling it around by hand which is working out great. The small shop vac I'm using is still heinously noisy and totally overpowered, I'm sure I'll burn it up eventually if I leave it that restricted.
Don't forget I'm a complete newbie and have never seen anyone really clean a record before, amazingly enough.
The little white 10 for $30 Last brushes have become the weapon of choice for putting on the solvent. I should try to make a video of what I'm doing it seems to be working great. I have a 40x "dissecting" microscope (top lit) so I can easily see larger dirt on a stylus or in record groove. From spending time looking for dirt at that level I'm pretty sure the records are getting really farking clean and I have decided that you must use a solvent to clean a stylus. I know I'm not really able to see anything but major issues with a stylus at that level, but wow the dirt is pretty scary and easy to see smaller crud layers that don't come off without a solvent.
Another thing the microscope is teaching me is to be able to eyeball record condition better at goodwill or garage sales. A record can be pretty dirty and end up sounding great. It can LOOK scratched up with light scratches but the scratches are actually sort of floating across the top of the grooves. Some seemingly smaller scratches look like someone gouged a soldering iron through a series of canyons, with a big melty looking BUMP built up on either side of the scratch from the displaced plastic. Nothing's gonna make that playable, right?
For the main record cleaning solution luckily I already have reverse osmosis water (I run it through prefilter then a 1.0 micron carbon block then a 0.5 carbon block before the RO membrane. I used to have a big aquarium ...
I'm using 99% isopropyl, and Triton X-114. How often do I get to use chemicals with cool names like Triton X-114???
Here's the thing, I tried to take pics and it was difficult. But I compared water, the diy solution with Triton X-114 (tm) (c) brand additive, and a well known commercial solution that costs around $6/ounce.
I just dropped each one onto the surface of a dry record. What happened, was the diy solution totally penetrated and spread out through the grooves faster than the commercial solution. A shiny patch formed about a half inch out on either side of the drops where the solution was flooding the valleys of the record grooves. Capillary action? Surface tension, right? It was very obvious that the diy solution had a lower surface tension, if I understand what that means. It was "wetter"?? The commercial solution stayed more in a drop, and did not flow out into the grooves.
Heck I should look at the wettening under the microscope. I'm not real sure it means one is better than the other but if I had to make a late night TV advertisement for miracle record cleaning chemicals I would pimp the crap out of the amazing wettening ability that you can see before your very eyes.
For the initial de-dusting of garage sale records I've found the brushes with two rows of carbon bristles and a center of velvet pad to be best (LP Gear, Hunt, Audioquest). I wish I could vacuum the initial dust right off the record, but if a filthy record touched the vac arm it would grind the dust in mercilessly I think. I'm thinking about trying to make a thing where the tip of the vac arm rides on a bearing on the center clamp. Then it could get real close but not touch the record at all, even with velvet? Something super soft like those carbon bristles would be great with a powerful flow of vac air. It seems like I'd have to have a clamp or bearing at the outside edge of the record to really do this properly.