thanks to monomer who replied to my thread at lathe trolls, he pointed me towards another thread where blacknwhite reviews the book “DISK RECORDING VOL.1: Groove Geometry And The Recording Process”.
its an anthology of articles on the subject vinyl recording. its collected and released by AES - audio engineering society.
550 pages of raw knowledge at a price of about 50$.
a preview of the book can be found here:
http://www.aes.org/…/disk-anthology-1.pdf

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searching the internet i found two craftmen who had made their own cutterheads ground up. these heads are really inspiringly made and i strongly advice to visit the websites of the two.
here follows some sample pictures from their projects, but please visit their sites for original explanations and so forth.

here is the second version of Flo’s cutterhead, used is drives with rapid prototyped cones

here is marks cutterhead featuring drives with cones made of cobber sheet, soldered together with the needle holder

here is Flo’s first version of cutterhead running

and here is Marks cutterhead running

pictures are from
Flo Kaufmann lofi cutterheads
Marks website - record lathe

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on the secret society of lathe trolls i have a forum string going. here is some good advices from fusionkid:

“Yes it is totally possible to design and build a cutterhead, it’s not complicated and it’s all been done before. It is basically 2 voice coil motors (with feedback coils) coupled together by use of a tool (stylus) holder that is sprung so that the stylus returns to its resting point. Neumann used BeCu springs, mounted at the opposite end to the stylus, the axes of which match the motors’ in this case springs are flat not coiled.
Research “voice coil motors” and “loudspeaker design” these are the same device in different applications all the maths required is covered by these two applications, many voice coil motors have feedback coils, so there are many documented designs on the web. You will need good engineering facilities like a lathe, mill, coil winding machine, measuring eqpt. Start point for design will probably need to be with the magnets, unless you are designing/making your own magnets, you need to find suitable magnets and design around them.”
- fusionkid

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here follows my precious collection of links concerning the diy of vinyl record cutting and pressing:

• yuri suzuki -made an exhibition where he recorded and pressed vinyls over one night
• mastering vinyl - how to master and eq the vinyl
• portable recording of vinyl - different techniques
• vinyl recorder - how to pack a stereo signal into one groove - very informative
• flo kauffman - one who has tried making the cutterhead DIY
• vinylium - makes a lathe you can put on your 1210 to cut dubplates right away
• lathe trolls - a dedicated community
• drdub - vinyl pressing firm
• gieskis - he made an diy ruff grammophone recorder
• how to make the vinyl - a site on the chemical stuff
• makezine - how to copy a vinyl record - more entertaining and provoking than useful
• marks lathe - DIY lathe ad cutterhead ground up

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