Glass Audiosystem CD lathe ..some observations

I've owned this unit now for about two months [having bought it new from Wadiameister].

I've lathed upward of 250 -300 disc .....I was starting to notice that the cutter was leaving a considerable bur on the discs ..

this lead me to investigate why ..originally all the shavings would disapear up the hover nozzel but now I was getting a milky shaving that was initially soft.

the cause is the blade heating the shavings to near melting and this is caused by the blade becoming blunt ....

So What to do .....having a local light industry mean that I could hawk the cutting bit round a few places to see if I could get an off the shelf replacement ....you can't no one has seen a 'D' bit of similar profile. So stumped again I thought the only alternative was to approach the original seller for a brand new blade. Then it occurred that I might be able to get it sharpened .. a quick search of yellow pages and few phone calls found me a small company that specialize in '1 of' and small tool sharpening and cutting ..they offered to take a look .

Two days latter I get my original blade back in the post sharpened ....with trepidation I fit it to the lathe ...I tell myself it can't be worse than the blunt one that was melting the edge of the last cd. I fit it using the template made on initial receipt of the lathe....

wow its better than the original edge ...cut a cd in a single peel creating a ball of shaving .....

I've made myself a small jig that sets the correct angle of the cutting blade ..to do this you need a square of material metal wood or in my case some of Dr Rocks perspex cd player case ! about an inch square. I then cut a a slither off one face to create a 85degree angle rather than the 90 degree this allows me to adjust the 'D' bits blade angle [hook angle ?] quickly and accurately.

The company is making me a few spare blades too ...I'll report back if these are as good as the original or not worth the effort/cost etc. It would have been easier to have returned to wadiameister for the spares but I'm nothing if not unconventional.

I saw a question possed about the best pens to use ....the edding 500 that comes with the unit was temprmental to start with and kept drying out/ lack of ink flow ?
So I investigated a number of different pens for IR absorbtion and ease of use ....

The best was a black poster paint pen like

http://www.dickblick.com/zz221/29/

which i use over the top of the now working edding pen ...

I use a hot air blower to dry the poster paint ..this takes a couple of wafts and the paint can be seen to go matt. If you leave it to air dry this can take about five minutes.

Please note this is not a discussion as to the effectualness of the unit just a few practical tips ....

 

Staedtler lumocolor works really well - afraid getting the head round this setting up thing challenging though!

 

This one to be precise:

http://www.greatart.co.uk/STAEDTLER...1163&typeAffichage=afficheArticle&idCarac=009

This is the one that is supplied with Auric Illuminator kits. Only worth ordering from the above link if you order say 10 as the delivery cost is a bit steep.