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Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

I didn't see any mention of precautions relating to vinyl spall/dust produced by these lathes. As far as I know vinyl is toxic, and I'd expect to see some kind of extraction tube or enclosure if this is being done in a domestic setting.

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One of the many secrets of lathe cutting is that these aren't actually PVC, but rather PETG. They actually play nicer and are more durable than pressed PVC records and can have a lower noise floor. On a good day, we can make a cut record that sounds nicer than a pressed one.

Back before CDJs people in the UK used to cut records like this for playing unreleased music in clubs. We referred to the material used for this as "acetate" but I don't know what it was technically. You didn't do it at home though, so maybe the businesses that did it had to have air filters.

We called these records "dubplates" since this practice came from West Indian soundystem culture. I'm sure there are still DJs that do this today.

Acetates are still used in the manufacturing process - even pressed records need to be cut once - but they aren't great as products to send to home-users because they degrade from usage very quickly.

We are also running a soundsystem and mainly cutting for other DJs.

Records are cool!

You right. This practice lives on in dubstep and soundsystem music in general.

That was my first thought reading this: if these devices spread too far, all the magic will be gone. Dubplates are special not because they are one of a kind, they are special because they are one of a kind while also being so much more exclusive than mixtapes (which can be just as one of a kind, but aren't exclusive at all). Widely available home-cut vinyl might perhaps breed an awesome new culture, but if that happens it will definitely kill the incumbent.

Nitrocellulose lacquer on a substrate, says Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetate_disc

I guess you'd really have to get your bed leveling dialed in perfectly to 3d print a record

edit:

ok I googled it: 3d printed playable record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM7hwAuXqCE

1. yes it's possible - using some kind of resin printing method, not FDM.

2. no it doesn't sound very good.

> As far as I know vinyl is toxic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ2czFuIYmQ&pp=ygURYmVubiBqb...

"Vinyl: Maybe it's time we had an intervention" by Benn Jordan.

tl;dw: He puts a VOC meter to a vinyl record and yep they're definitely toxic. Remember, if you smell something, it's going inside your body. That includes "new plastic smell", farts, etc.

> This is just my objective opinion based on a whole lotta research... if you're an avid vinyl collector whose pee-pee hurts after watching this video, understand that my pee-pee hurts a whole lot more.

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