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New blank wax cylinders

PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 7:36 pm
by Viewmaster
Pete asked where one could get blank wax cylinders from. I said in UK and USA...they are both the same make and here is a piccy of what you get for 7 quid.......don't all rush. :lol:
Albert.

PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 8:06 pm
by DrZarkov
Very professional made, it's looking very "original". I would by them, if I had a real phonograph. But for NBTV I still doubt if those are the best solution.

PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:25 pm
by Viewmaster
DrZarkov wrote:Very professional made, it's looking very "original". I would by them, if I had a real phonograph. But for NBTV I still doubt if those are the best solution.


Yes that's the big problem.
Doubts.
Too many of 'em and very few real facts to work on. Not the best solution by a long shot I agree, but an intruging one to try and solve.
Will the Edikow, like the Phoenix, ever rise from the ashes? :lol:
Albert.

PostPosted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 6:06 am
by DrZarkov
I'm already looking for suitable parts on fleamarkets. But today it is here so incredible hot in Western Germany, there wasn't much to find. (I found four new identical broadband loudspeakers of good quality for 2 EUR each, but that is for later experiments...) Now I'm happy to be back at home, and I will very soon open a bottle of cold beer and do nothing for the short rest of the day. :D

PostPosted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 12:26 pm
by Steve Anderson
DrZarkov wrote:Now I'm happy to be back at home, and I will very soon open a bottle of cold beer and do nothing for the short rest of the day. :D


Now there's a man after my own heart! Well done! The best idea ever posted on this board!

Steve A.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:05 am
by Viewmaster
DrZarkov wrote:I'm already looking for suitable parts on fleamarkets.


Am I reading the doctor correctly? Parts for what?
Surely not an Edikow. :shock:

If so, I too am at present making drawings for the mechanism (shafts/bearings/gear sizes).
I have decided to have a 3 gear drive to the cylinder shaft from the rotating opto fork sync wheel enabling it to run at either 150/250/375 RPM, each of these speeds gives me the essential complete NBTV frames per rev of cylinder I require , ( 5, 3 or 2), and thus gives latitude in recording speed experimentation.
Albert.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:09 am
by DrZarkov
Yes, an Edikow! It is a very interesting project to follow up my "Zarkovisor". I'm very interested in grammophones and phonographs, too, so this step is only logical to me. :)

So the all-mechanic monitor and the mirror-drum wil have to wait...

"Graphophone" information.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:22 am
by Stephen
I have posted a few more graphophone patents of both the disc and cylinder type in the Patents and Articles section of the forum. As I understand it, Chichester Bell and Sumner Tainter regarded a machine with an incised, rather than embossed, hill-and-dale modulated groove to be a graphophone, whether of the disc or cylinder type. This designation was to distinguish their devices from Mr. Edison's phonograph that was strictly an embossed hill-and-dale modulated groove machine until after the development of the Bell-Tainter machines. Emil Berliner's laterally-modulated groove gramophone was not yet a factor.

Interestingly, Mr. Tainter invented the wrapped cardboard tubes used for so many applications today for graphophone cylinders. See US Patent 374,133. He also developed a graphophone cylinder comprising a very hard coated ozokerite wax coating on such a wrapped cardboard tube. See US Patent 420,150. The interesting thing about ozokerite wax is that it cuts a very nice swarf and has a very high melting point.

Considering the cost of new moulded wax cylinders, it might be worthwhile to take a look at coating cardboard tubes with ozokerite wax.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 7:17 am
by Stephen
DrZarkov wrote:I'm already looking for suitable parts on fleamarkets. But today it is here so incredible hot in Western Germany, there wasn't much to find. (I found four new identical broadband loudspeakers of good quality for 2 EUR each, but that is for later experiments...) Now I'm happy to be back at home, and I will very soon open a bottle of cold beer and do nothing for the short rest of the day. :D
Save your beer cans! See http://www.floka.com/lofi/dbmastering.html .

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 7:28 am
by DrZarkov
It became difficult to find any beer cans in Germany since we have to pay a deposite for cans, everybody prefers bottles. So I agree in using the Tainter-system, except that I will try Fimo first. It's not expensive and available everywhere.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 6:53 pm
by Viewmaster
DrZarkov wrote:Yes, an Edikow! It is a very interesting project to follow up my "Zarkovisor". I'm very interested in grammophones and phonographs, too, so this step is only logical to me. :)


Ah a brave, brave man is the Dr. :)
But I hope that you have plenty of mechanical engineering experience to build it as the tolerances on an Edikow are less than a sound phonograph.
Maybe you will try using an old phonograph but these are pricey and run too slow for NBTV. No one knows how rumble will manifest itself either........

It maybe better to use machined plastic gears rather than steel or toothed belt drives.

Have you solved the sync problem if the NBTV is seperate from the new Edikow?
.......It is unlikely that reliable sync pulses will be recordable onto a wax disc.

The resultant Edikow picture will be degraded both by restrictive bandwidth on the recording and also the surface noise inherant on playback.
Is this OK for you?

Can you get or build a cutter head good enough for its purpose?

Are you happy with a restrictive playing time or will you make extra long cylinders?

Where will the sound be stored? Double track cylinder so halving the play time, or a seperate sound cylinder, thereby doubling construction time and cost etc, or will the sound be on a CD as at present on NBTV?

These are just a few of the many questions one should answer to one's own satisfaction before spending time and money on building a Edikow machine.

For myself, I plan to use roller bearings for the cyl mandrel. All shafts, carriages and the leadscrew will be adjustable in order to line up all the moving parts to get constant depth of disc cutting and the cut to be exactly parallel along the cylinder as my own sync system will depend on this.
The method of construction depends on what machines one has.
A lathe and pillar drill are the minimum for this project to succeed if built from scratch.

Hope I haven't put you off, but taking on a Edikow is no where near as easy(!) as building a NBTV......and the biggest problem is the disc cutter and speed.
Albert.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 8:57 pm
by DrZarkov
I planned to use the strong motor of an old prewar Dual pickup. It runs between 78 and 90 r.p.m. in direct drive, so I have to make bigger cylinders, I thought about a diameter of 10 cm. I was originally planning to make the cutter-head myself from a loudspeaker, as I saw on the side of that guy from Switzerland this idea is not so bad. For reproducing I will take a saphire and a piezoelectronic pickup (was it known in that time, or were there only magnetic pickups?) from an old stereo recordplayer (stereo, because it is compatible with hill and dale writing, not for using sound.). I will not use an extra synch-device, if NBTV is compatible with shortwave, it must be compatible with cylinder records. I have here my first prototype monitor without synch, it is working just with two poties to control the speed, similar to devices which were used in the early thirties. Even the video-driver is very basic and can easily be replaced by another circuit using valves. My first model will not have any sound, possibly I will modify it later.

For "perfect" NBTV I still have CDs and IC controlled synch in my new monitor. For historical purposes this is not necessary, there I can better stay with the "real thing".