Hello everyone, I have looked up this old post and I want to do this on my TNT first generation turntable: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/diy-vpi-based-turntable.185469/
Anyone know the whereabouts of this turntable? Also, the materials to build this turntable?
Thanks,
Ken
Anyone know the whereabouts of this turntable? Also, the materials to build this turntable?
Thanks,
Ken
Attachments
What are you looking to do? Just take the components from your existing VPI and install the platter bearing, motor, and tonearm in a new custom base (aka plinth)? That is fairly easy to do. The hole for the platter bearing and the hole for the tonearm mount will have a very specific distance between them. Easy to measure and drill into a custom platter of your own design. There is more fungibility with the motor distance. Any change to the original offset distance would need a difference belt length.
If that’s the design you have in mind, it will require careful measurements of your platter, drive mech and electronics, bearing assembly and the chosen arm geometry. There are a few engineering approaches that can allow for a wider arm selection, like a sliding mount or pivoting swing out armboard. The one in the photo you have posted looks to be a fixed mount.
For materials, I’d point you to something having mechanical stability. I think a block of reclaimed wood with resin filling could look stunning as a plinth, with a constrained layer of aluminum sandwiched between the two wood and resin layers. The aluminum will help maintain the proper flatness even even as the wood absorbs ambient moisture and attempts to deform. Delrin/POM is another interesting material.
Some furniture builders will do side builds like this, though it depends where you are. With widespread philistinism abound these recent years, I found most furniture builders are so caught up in get-rich-fast schemes of selling cheap materials with a fancy front veneer to uninformed lifestyle demographics that they don’t see the artistic value in real custom work, anymore.
If you want a perfect fitment, then computer numerical controlled machining is one route for the cutting and shaping. These machines can do almost anything you can dream of, so long as the spindle and motor have clearance from the work surfaces during the cutting. They can mill a project in individual stackable layers, or one big piece, and this allows for sand-filled voids, a removable concealed base layer, and so forth.
I design with CAD and have been putting together a kind of bespoke system with an industrial look. The company doing the faceplates is called Lava 3D Printing (also known as Precintl) and their aluminum work is beautiful. The engineering team is on the ball, don’t make excuses, and they use 5-axis cnc machines that change their own tool bits, deburr, brush or polish surfaces. The tolerances are better than 0.01mm and you can specify many different metals or materials. I’ve also had them do laser cutting of mild steel for EMI shields.
Another option that’s in my mind is es-hovertech-audiolab, a member here on DIYaudio who I think can make a table to your specifications.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/newly-made-magnetic-levitation-turntable-diy-kit.403524/
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