The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Viewmaster · Joined: 16 Oct 2007 Posts: 10 Location: UK

Here's photo of my homemade cutter for Edison wax cylinders.
It's an adapted Edison Ediphone dictaphone machine.

An advance ball system is used to ensure constant depth of cut. First time I believe that the ball system has been used for cutting round phonograph cylinders. It's adjustment is the round white circle top right .

The shiny cylinder grooves can just be seen.
The playback pick up ( a Shure cartridge) is at bottom left swung away from cylinder. This is mounted on a short tone arm fixed to a travelling carriage which tracks along the cylinder as it rotates.
The silver coloured home made cutter head is seen in the raised up position. (made from a 4 inch speaker with heavy damping to the stylus cutter mounted in a parallel motion mount).
There is also a microscope mounted at the rear....made from an old binocular plus eyeglass!

Although this machine records music it was designed to record Narrow band Television signals. I call it 'The Edikow machine' in memory of EDIson and Paul NipKOW who invented the rotating disc used for NBTV.
Albert.

motorino · Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 161

very good work!

do you have some samples?

Steve E. · Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:19 am Post subject:

WOW. I can't believe I missed this one. You get the "cool posting award" for the first quarter of 2008.

Viewmaster · Joined: 16 Oct 2007 Posts: 10 Location: UK

Viewmaster · Joined: 16 Oct 2007 Posts: 10 Location: UK

Steve E. · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 11:14 am Post subject:

Do we get to see any of the video images?