diy rcm - vac too powerful

LamontGrady

New Member
Hi everyone. I have a lot to talk about but this is what finally got me off my ass to post something. I have learned a great deal from lurking/searching these forums so I want to give back and participate a bit and share my joy.

In the past month I suddenly got back into vinyl after a very long time of my wife and I hanging onto our albums but not having a record player.

I got a reasonable Panasonic RD-2900 dd turntable with an AT 71 and got a new stylus for it. Then I snagged Pioneer PL-570 and Spec 1.

So here's my diy rcm. So far so good but not yet perfect.

http://www.pbase.com/fhludlow/rcm

original.jpg
 
That turntable motor won't have anywhere near the torque you need to turn the platter with a vacuum applied. You'll need something like a bread or ice cream maker motor to spin against any vacuum worth using. You could try some sort of soft idler with a manual crank against the outer edge of that platter; the roughness from the timing marks should help the idler grip.
It does look quite pretty though; nice job with the aesthetics :thmbsp:
 
That turntable motor won't have anywhere near the torque you need to turn the platter with a vacuum applied.

Andy got it - and when you upgrade the motor, you'll need to couple the record firmly to the platter, or the platter will simply spin underneath it, leaving the record stuck to the vac arm. :yes:
 
Doh! I forgot I posted this.

Thanks guys that's helpful, I've never actually seen one in action. I pulled the guts, the motor wasn't really working to begin with. I just turn it by hand.

We have a lot of thrift stores, I was looking for ice cream maker but they did have bread makers! I didn't think of that.
 
The secret is out on the bread makers, low speed High torque drives.

I have one waiting in the project line.
 
Well.. the bread maker motor or drive isn't as low speed as we would like. At least not the one I used.
 
I've seen many breadmakers in the thrifts but have not purchased one yet because I wasn't sure if it would work properly. I guess they are not so good by the above comments. Anyone had good results using one?
 
I don't have anything together, but the ice cream maker motor does look to be a pretty good fit. The speek *looks* like it will be good. I did find mine at a thrif store and I know I've seen others, so in these parts at least, they do pop up.
 
If you can gear the motor down from a bread maker, it would be great.. THey are powerful motors, which is what you need...
 
If you can gear the motor down from a bread maker, it would be great.. THey are powerful motors, which is what you need...

I wonder of you could use one of the speed controllers they sell for shop equipment on that bread machine... :scratch2:
 
Belt drive from the bread machine motor might work to slow it down.

The problem with that might be the belt slipping, seeing that the vacuum causes a fair bit of drag on the platter. Some sort of strong (metal) gearing would be a better way of reducing speed, I'd think.

-Don
 
If anyone can find a commercial laundry mangle --one of those things with big rollers that laundries run sheets and things through-- the motors on those are geared down, and exert a TREMENDOUS amount of slow-speed torque. They also come with controllers that allow start-and-stop and reverse motions. They turn slowly enough that you would not need to add any further gearing. Overkill for an RCM, like using a brushes on a bulldozer to sweep the patio, but would definitely work. I played with one of them years ago when I was making a particle accelerator from scrap parts, and I remember the torque from it after gearing was remarkably strong, stronger than a strong man. Just mention it to add another possibility to the list of ice-cream maker and breadmaker motors.

LamontGrady, Welcome to the posting side of AK! :thmbsp: I really like the look of your DIY RCM; using the record player plinth/body as the top like that looks good, and helps it to blend in well with the rest of one's audio gear, regular turntable, etc... Almost like functional camouflage. Well done, and I hope you post more stuff like this in the future!
 
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 :D 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. :music:

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??? :smoke:

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.
 
If anyone can find a commercial laundry mangle --one of those things with big rollers that laundries run sheets and things through-- the motors on those are geared down, and exert a TREMENDOUS amount of slow-speed torque. They also come with controllers that allow start-and-stop and reverse motions. They turn slowly enough that you would not need to add any further gearing. Overkill for an RCM, like using a brushes on a bulldozer to sweep the patio, but would definitely work. I played with one of them years ago when I was making a particle accelerator from scrap parts, and I remember the torque from it after gearing was remarkably strong, stronger than a strong man. Just mention it to add another possibility to the list of ice-cream maker and breadmaker motors.

Ha ha that makes me laugh because a friend of mine's mom has been trying to foist one of those wringer-washers off onto all of us for years. One of those things could power a FARM of record cleaners! :thmbsp: My old grandma still had one in the early 1980s, in the "cellar" of course. Including cellar door one could actually slide down.

We were all given dire warnings that if one finger tip went into those rollers it would pretty much proceed to slowly and deliberately empty the rest of your body like a skin tube of toothpaste. :nono:

All we parents have these days to threaten our kids with is carpal tunnel syndrome and obesity. :boring:
 
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