Galvanic & preforming

From the original to the first duplicate

Following the cut, an electrochemical process treats the lacquer foil or the DMM blank (or DMM mother), creating a mold from the original cut.

To make the lacquer cut conductive, we first remove a portion of the plastic from the foil's center. We then cleanse the film to remove any remaining particles, including dust. Next, we negatively charge the film in a bath and then spray it with a silver solution. Silver adheres to the negatively charged film's surface because of its positive charge.

The subsequent electroplating bath affixes an additional layer of nickel to the foil. Upon completion of this procedure, it is feasible to isolate the silver and nickel layers from the foil. The progenitor is a reverse copy of the original cut. Similar to the mother, the father produces a print. This generates an exact replica of the original cut, which is subsequently evaluated for optical and acoustic quality. After successfully completing the inspection, you can obtain negative prints from the mother. These are known as press dies or sons and function as a mold for the record press. Preforming is a process that shapes the dies. This involves piercing, grinding, and centering the dies, and bending their edges to meet the specifications of the pressing machine.

Unlike the classical lacquer cut, the DMM process utilizes the cut as a mother, leading to a significant reduction in the production time of press dies. Consequently, DMM incisions are less susceptible to noise, such as crackling, that may arise during the electroplating process.

Etching

We print the customer's selected motif on a DMM blank, then incise it for our etching service.

We remove the printed surface, leaving the remaining material as an etching on the final record.

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