[NJARC] Fwd: [New post] Phonographs Through The Eye Of An Electron Microscope

Tue Jun 16 17:09:35 EDT 2015

A bit off topic but cool nonetheless

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Hackaday <comment-reply at wordpress.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 10:02 AM
Subject: [New post] Phonographs Through The Eye Of An Electron Microscope
To: <starbase89 at gmail.com>

   Adam Fabio posted: "Hackaday Prize judge [Ben Krasnow] has been busy
lately. He's put his scanning electron microscope (SEM) to work creating an
animation of a phonograph needle playing a record. (YouTube link) This is
the same 80's SEM [Ben] hacked back in November. Unfortu"    Respond to
this post by replying above this line
      New post on *Hackaday*
<http://hackaday.com/author/adamfabio/>  Phonographs
Through The Eye Of An Electron Microscope
<http://hackaday.com/2015/06/16/phonographs-through-the-eye-of-an-electron-microscope/>
by
Adam Fabio <http://hackaday.com/author/adamfabio/>

Hackaday Prize judge [Ben Krasnow] has been busy lately. He's put his
scanning electron microscope (SEM) to work creating an animation of a
phonograph needle playing a record
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCdsyCWmt8>. (YouTube link) This is the
same 80's SEM [Ben] hacked back in November
<http://hackaday.com/2014/09/03/ben-krasnow-hacks-a-scanning-electron-microscope/>.
Unfortunately, [Ben's]  JSM-T200 isn't quite large enough to hold an entire
12" LP, so he had to cut a small section of a record out. The vinyl mods
weren't done there though. SEMs need a conductive surface for imaging[image:
phono_anim_1]. Vinyl is an insulator. [Ben] dealt with this by using his
vacuum chamber to evaporate a thin layer of silver on the vinyl.

Just imaging the record wouldn't be enough; [Ben] wanted an animation of
a needle traveling through the record grove. He tore apart an old
phonograph needle and installed it in on a copper wire in the SEM. Thanks
to the dual stage setup of the JSM-T200, [Ben] was able to move the
record-chip and needle independently. He could then move the record
underneath the needle as if it were actually playing. [Ben] used his
oscilloscope to record 60 frames, each spaced 50 microns apart. He used
octave <http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/> to process the data, and wound
up with the awesome GIF animation you see on the left.

[image: pits][Ben] wasn't done though. He checked out a few other recording
formats, including CD and DVD optical media, and capacitance electronic disc
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc>, an obscure
format from RCA which failed miserably in the market. The toughest
challenge [Ben] faced was imaging the CD media. The familiar pits of a CD
are stored on a thin aluminum layer sandwiched between the lacquer label
and the plastic disc. He tried dissolving the plastic with chemicals, but
enough plastic was left behind to distort the image. The solution turned
out to be double-sided tape. Sticking some tape down on the CD and peeling
it off cleanly removed the aluminum, and provided a sturdy substrate with
which to mount the sample in the SEM.

We're curious if stereo audio data can be extracted from the SEM images.
 [Oona] managed to do this with a mono recording from a toy robot.
<http://hackaday.com/2014/03/03/atomic-powered-robots-and-records-played-with-optics/>
Who's
going to be the first one to break out the image analysis software and
capture some audio from [Ben's] images?

Read more of this post
<http://hackaday.com/2015/06/16/phonographs-through-the-eye-of-an-electron-microscope/#more-159190>
  *Adam Fabio <http://hackaday.com/author/adamfabio/>* | June 16, 2015 at
7:00 am | Tags: Applied Science <http://hackaday.com/?tag=applied-science>,
phonograph <http://hackaday.com/?tag=phonograph>, record
<http://hackaday.com/?tag=record>, scanning electron microscope
<http://hackaday.com/?tag=scanning-electron-microscope>, sem
<http://hackaday.com/?tag=sem> | Categories: classic hacks
<http://hackaday.com/?cat=24483654> | URL: http://wp.me/pk3lN-FpA

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