The mechanical video recorder PhonoVision

[af024]

Wow, I'm amazed! Did you just drive the cartridge directly from the speaker output of your amplifier or have you (100v line transformer perhaps?) stepped up the output voltage?

[dalekmoore2007]

Originally Posted by af024

Wow, I'm amazed! Did you just drive the cartridge directly from the speaker output of your amplifier or have you (100v line transformer perhaps?) stepped up the output voltage?

If you have a magnetic phono cartridge you can drive it direct from your laptop or PC audio output to drive it ..they just cost more and i wanted to do this cheap and happened for find a 100 watt amplifer at my local reuse shop (at the dump ) just the thing for the ceramic cartridge !

I knew old record lathes used at times ceramic cartridges for their cutting heads see documents below

Driving a transformer to do this i have not tried it might work again as you see in the leaflets

here is my first Test in the video bottom of the page on this site
https://www.taswegian.com/NBTV/forum...2747&start=135
If you can do this it will work this is what you would expect to hear for a good recording that lid its on is acting like a speaker SSTV used here..that was an old 50s ceramic mono cartridge ,i was going to use it but had only a bandwidth up to 8 khz doing a frequency sweep test on it .
any other questions just ask no problems love to see other people give it a go and keep Bairds idea alive.

[af024]

That's very interesting dalekmoore2007. I guess I had one of those modern Chinese red cartridges in my head and I wondered how it could possibly work with sufficiently high tracking weight to cause a groove to be cut. I just had visions of it bottoming out of simply dropping to bits. I can see how using a good old fashioned type with stiff suspension would be more successful. Thank you for the link and the article - interesting.

[dalekmoore2007]

Originally Posted by af024

That's very interesting dalekmoore2007. I guess I had one of those modern Chinese red cartridges in my head and I wondered how it could possibly work with sufficiently high tracking weight to cause a groove to be cut. I just had visions of it bottoming out of simply dropping to bits. I can see how using a good old fashioned type with stiff suspension would be more successful. Thank you for the link and the article - interesting.

Well pretty much i am using those cheap Chinese ceramic cartridges.the weight BTW isn't that much one of those trial and error tests you have to do on a few bank cds or dvds to work it out ..best use a old scratched one that's useless any way . as you know cds dvds scratch very easy so you don't have to cut them using a cutting stylus and a lathe head that costs more than a new plasma tv!
Most people looking into making a record lathe convert a speaker but once i started this i worked out why bother keep it small and repurpose what you need is already made the stylus on these things as very hard mines done at least 100 discs still going fine /
What i didn't mention that is very important is the bearing movement so the lathe arm can move up and down with the record cd in this case..and is not sloppy you just want a fine up down movement side to side should be nothing apart from the gearing moving it across the record.i used a HD voice coil small bearing very well made ....i used the Hd bearing for the tone arm movement .
As you see below it all look complex but as with every thing you just work out one problem at a time

[af024]

So you are using a Chinese job. Wow .. incredible.

[dalekmoore2007]

Originally Posted by af024

So you are using a Chinese job. Wow .. incredible.

Yes ,now i know it works it would be interesting to test against other cartridges as in what what gives the best bandwidth .
I am going to swap over my play back amplifier to a wide bandwidth opamp circuit as i am not sure what i am seeing is all that's recorded .
Also looking into stereo recording something Baird never tried for this . so thats next on the list .