A lathe as it is often referred to, is a some equipment designed with a
slowly rotating feed screw mechanism and carriage to move a cutting head
across the disc. The accurately shaped cutting stylus, mounted into the
head, cuts a precise spiral groove across a flat lacquer coated aluminium
disc.
Next sees the cutting head installed on the lathe, this is simply a
phonograph pickup in reverse, audio is fed in and you get mechanical motion
out. There is a specially shaped cutting stylus, and a feed screw mechanism
which moves the head across the record to make the spiral groove.
The phrase waxing, still exists today the old solid block of wax were in use
until World War II. Before there was no magnetic tape and the recordings had
to be cut originally on huge thick blocks of warmed, beeswax. The final
product before processing became a single lacquered disk onto which the
actual recording grooves were cut.
Once a cutting stylus is started it cannot be stopped without ruining the
disk. A silent groove test cut is made, outside the diameter of the finished
disc. This is examined to check for correct groove size, and sometimes
played back to ensure that the noise level is low.
