Not too long after I got my X-Carve (https://www.inventables.com/) CNC machine, I saw a vinyl LP record that had been carved and made into a clock. The idea of this amazed me so I did some more searching.
Although I could find many examples of carved vinyl records, I was unable to find information to help me get started. There were some YouTube videos showing a carve in process but nothing to give me a good starting point in terms of bits and feeds/speeds. I did read in forums with people stating their experiences and topics in general references such as "going fast enough to prevent melting" but, again, nothing to get me started. That was until I found one particular forum post where they guy showed the bit he used and the feeds/speeds to go with it. He stated his outcome was very good. That was where my thoughts turned into actions - I order the exact same bit, created a design, and used his settings. My results were not as good as his but the wheels were now in motion. I tried another bit and made changes to my feeds and tried again and got better results. And, from there, it has been a process of trial-and-errors while making changes along the way.
The purpose of this site is to provide information from my experiences in a way that can help others get started - to hopefully provide information what I was unable to find.
First and foremost - one important thing to note is safety. Although I do not always wear eye protection when carving wood, I do went a vinyl record is under the bit. (Actually, for me it is kinda scary when carving a record.) Even though I have a vacuum system in place to help remove carved shrapnel, the vinyl chips tend to get thrown farther than the wood ones and they are much sharper. In my imagination, it would not take much for the router to fling a broken chunk of vinyl my way and it could cause some serious pain and injury.
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