Anyone here have any luck flattening warped LPs? Lots of youtube solutions, just wondering if any smart folks here at DMS have a process.
I have not researched this on YouTube, so I do not know what they say. The secret to forming any thermal plastic is heat+pressure+time and variance of each has an impact on the result. I have records that warped over time just by leaning on a shelf the wrong way for a long time. (The point is there was no excess heat.)
The problem with LP vinyl is that there is small range between them temp at which it warps from heat and the temp where it melts. I would have to look it up, think it melts at like 200F. Temps that low are not very reliably set in a standard oven. Too much heat can cause the moisture in the vinyl to kind of bubble to the surface and damage the tracks.
I have had decent results with cleaning a vinyl record really well and putting it between two plates of glass (that came from an old 80’s stereo cabinet, you know the one). I just placed the vinyl in a paper sleeve between the glass plates and stacked a bunch of books on it for a couple of days. The one time I tried a heat gun to warm the vinyl, the results were bad because of hot spots. I would try the pressure+time method on a record you don’t care about first, of course.
Might be lower than 200F. I was driving about 15 minutes with a stack of LP’s in the sun, and the top LP developed some severe warping on the 1/2 that was in the sun.
What about doing this plus placing outside on a sunny day? If not hot enough of a day then place stack on a black board? One tiog about this is you can test heat range first with a thermometer that records highs/lows.
The warping temp is way lower than the melting temp. 200deg is then it starts to foam and flow like a fluid .
Wondering if this could be done (carefully) in the vacu-forming machine…
On a similar vane has anyone repaired skips caused by dust etc… by covering in Elmer’s glue or anything similar?
I am also considering trying to repair a couple of particularly persistent skips by very carefully looking to see if I can actually spot the issue with a high mag optical scope.
Anyone ever done this type of repair?
I have heard of using Elmer’s glue to clean records, but not fixing them.