Skip to main content

How Vinyl is Manufactured and Processed

How Vinyl is Manufactured and Processed

The process of how to press vinyl records to be played or sold. Let’s assume that the song, or album, has been recorded, mixed and mastered, depending on quantities, vinyl records are produced by cutting on vinyl blank or on lacquer disk and pressing as a result. The audio file will be physically cut into a master disc.


Production of vinyl records

Making the Vinyl Blank
If it is a single piece record, vinyl dubplate, it will be cut in real time using a cutting machine. The cutting head of the machine cuts the audio information directly into the vinyl blank via the cutting stylus. Manufacturing takes exactly as long as the entire playing time of the finished plate. After that, the record is ready to play. An edition of 5 to about 50 pieces of a vinyl album, mixtape, etc., is done by direct real time cutting on vinyl blanks.


Making the Lacquer Disc
The audio information is cut on an aluminum disc which is coated with an acetate lacquer layer in real time with a cutting lathe. All later made vinyl are identical copies of this master disc. It is vital in this phase to keep the dust away from the surface of the lacquer sides to prevent any imperfections.


Recording Sound onto the Lacquer Disc
Process of custom vinyl pressing start with placing the blank disc onto a lathe. A heated sapphire designed to engrave grooves into the lacquer surface of the disc is used to record sound. The sapphire tips cut the recorded sound wave into the surface of the disc, with a small vacuum sucking up the lacquer. The recorded sound will be engraved into the disc as one continuous spiral groove, a physical manifestation of the frequency and amplitude. Once the cutting is complete, the sapphire tip is lifted, and the lacquer surface is checked for any defects.


Preparing the Stamper
The lacquer master is being sprayed with a layer of silver nitrate and then gets placed in a special electric bath. By the addition of nickel and electric current which flows through the pool, the nickel deposits on the silver of the lacquer master. After some hours this new negative layer is ready for pulling off, the result is a mirror image of the master disc, known as the stamper or the father, which is necessary for the next step. after this process the lacquer master is defective or useless.
Sometimes a mother is being formed again from the first father which gets engraved and archived to be able to produce additional stampers after several years. The mother is the negative image replacing the master disc.


Vinyl presentation

The Finished Vinyl

A stamper serves to press 500 to 1000 pieces of vinyl until it's worn out. In mechanical or hydraulic press machines. A stamper for each side of the vinyl, A and B, is being clamped into the pressing machine. Vinyl granules are placed in the form of a puck, also called vinyl cake, with the labels in the middle between the two stampers and pressed together with high temperature and force. Overlapping material gets removed and the vinyl is ready for cooling. In a few minutes, a large number of vinyl copies can be produced.

In the vinyl pressing phase, PVC pellets can be coloured and mixed to create different tones of the finished record. The entire process usually takes about 30 seconds per record and is fully automated. Once the records are perfectly trimmed, the first step starts again with a new lacquer fed into the stamper.


Additional information and sources:
Know the process of pressing vinyl records
The making of vinyl records
Production of phonograph records


Below find data showing the sales history for vinyl records:
Vinyl sales in America


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Moondog - Behold

The history of jazz has been one of fusion. Its musicians and composers have continually drawn upon a huge range of different musics to create the rich and diverse tapestry that is world jazz today. Jazz is an evolving tradition of music making. And how often, in the life stories of individual jazz musicians, do we see these same patterns operating at microcosm? The richness of Turkish music and culture sometimes seems at odds with its turbulent and cruel history. In 1979... the country suffered its third military take over in thirty years... Every kind of music was in Turkey at that point. But it was not appreciated. To understand the culture of the country, with those three military takeovers, Turkey could not go anywhere. Musically, it was very difficult. But things were beginning to happen. Traditional Turkish music is essentially monophonic, rich in melody and rhythm but with little by way of harmony. The contrast with western music, with its beautiful harmonies but rhythmic weakn...

Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

There has always been an uncomfortable tension between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, a cyclical influence that vacillates between inspiration, appropriation and separation. Popular music has broken off into categories of rock, pop, country, and R&B, each with their own origin stories. But R&B and rock, usually codified as vastly different, Black and white styles, have long been intertwined in ways our historical memory may have us forget.  Despite the innovation that comes from separation, rock and R&B always find their way back to each other. In recent years, rock veterans have turned to the genre’s classics for inspiration. Queens of the Stone Age veered from their typical hard rock with 2017’s Villains, a dance y album inspired by frontman Josh Homme’s love of 1920s jazz and swing, other Black genres that laid the groundwork for the popular music of today. The whitewashing of rock’s history has oversimplified music’s malleability and silenced the voices of Amer...

The Gap Band - The Sun Don't Shine Everyday

The Gap Band - The Sun Don't Shine Everyday Genre: RnB Released in: 1984 Duration: 5:14 "The Gap Band was most successful when working with producer Lonnie Simmons, with four consecutive gold records. Their party train soon slowed to a stop. They reformed in the 90s and occasionally toured and attempted a comeback album." See Previous Song of the Day