Electron microscope slow-motion video of vinyl LP----make money online

ever since setting up this electron

microscope in my shop I've wanted to

make animations with it showing video

taken through the microscope and I've

also been thinking about different

recording media lately so I put the two

together this weekend and came up with

this this is an animation that shows a

phonograph needle riding in an LP groove

so in this video I'm going to talk about

how I made this and some other recording

technologies the first step is to head

down to the local music store and pick

out a few LPS from the dollar bin and of

course the electron microscope chamber

is so small I can't fit the whole record

in there so I cut off a small section

the next problem is that the electron

microscope cannot image things that are

electrical insulators and the reason is

that the microscope works by firing

electrons at the object that you want to

inspect and if the object is an

insulator those electrons get trapped

inside the object because it's an

insulator and eventually what if add

enough electrons get trapped their

future electrons coming in will be

repelled because like charges repel each

other so the way to solve this problem

is to coat the object in something

conductive in this case I mounted the

pieces of record to a glass microscope

slide and then loaded the slide into a

vacuum chamber and evaporated some

silver metal onto the pieces of LP

normally this is done with a machine

called a sputter coder but my sputter

coder needs some work so I'm using

physical vapor deposition so this is

enough to image the record by itself and

I needed to prepare a stylus so that we

could see the dynamics I really wanted

to see the animation of the needle

flowing in the LP groove so I also got a

cheap stylus and cartridge from the same

music store of course from the used

needles bin and most of it is plastic

and even worse there's a couple magnets

inside there so the way this works is

that these stylus vibrates because of

the grooves in the LP and it moves the

magnets near a coil and that's what

generates the electricity that gets

amplified into the audio signal also

unfortunately if we put this directly in

the electron microscope those magnets

would deflect the electron path and

distort the image so I pulled the

magnets off of the stylist next I needed

to make us

a primitive tonearm that I could put

inside the electron microscope chamber

so that there would be some amount of

tracking allowed like a little bit of

compliance so that I could push the

needle into the record without it you

know destroying the record but still

have it follow the groove so I just used

a piece of copper wire and melted it

into the side of the stylus and then cut

away all the excess plastic so this is

what I was left with I also noticed that

there's sort of a rubber suspension on

here so that the actual stylus arm is

electrically isolated from everything

else on the stylus like the plastic and

everything so I added a tiny copper wire

and then use conductive carbon glue to

make sure that the stylus arm itself was

grounded or at least electrically

connected to everything else

this particular electron microscope has

two separate stages inside with their

own motion controls so this allowed me

to put the needle with its you know sort

of makeshift own arm onto one stage and

then put the piece of LP that's been

coated with silver onto another stage

and then I could move both of them

independently so that I could arrange it

to make an aesthetically pleasing image

after getting everything aligned that

turned on you can see the video image

that the electron microscope creates so

it is possible to get real-time imagery

this is running even at close to 60

fields per second but the resolution in

this mode is quite poor and so is the

contrast the signal is very low in order

to make a decent image the scanning

electron microscope requires about 10

seconds per frame to scan it out so what

I did was use the micrometers the

controls on the emotion controls on the

stage to move the record by a very very

tiny amount about 50 microns and then

take a still frame and I'm using my

Tektronix MDO oscilloscope to store the

data so the procedure you know I kind of

got in the rhythm of doing it and so

it's moved 50 microns take a frame save

it to the USB stick moved by 50 microns

take a frame you know saved at the stick

and so I eventually ended up with 60

frames each spaced about 50 microns

apart I used a couple of felt tip marks

on the CRT on the scanning electron

microscope to four as reference points

so since the position of the LP is not

perfect

90 degrees to the scope or perfectly 90

degrees to the movement axes I was

actually moving in two axes and then

using those marks on the screen to sort

of maintain a the ref the rough position

of that needle would stay about the same

I processed the data from the

oscilloscope in octave which is a an

open source MATLAB alternative and then

took the images from that and processed

them in Photoshop using batch processing

and then used Photoshop to create the

animated gif the playback speed of that

animated gif is about one four hundredth

actual speed if the record were playing

as you can see the stylus doesn't move

up and down or side to side in the

record groove since this is a stereo

record it actually has two channels of

audio information encoded in one groove

so diagonal movements sort of bottom

left to top right is one channel and

bottom right to top left is the other

channel so depending how the magnets

move based on the vibrations picked up

by that needle tip you can get different

signals sent to each channel so then I

thought well this is cool maybe there's

some other interesting recording formats

I can take a look at and yeah just in

the last week or two my friends at evil

mad scientist laboratories reminded me

or showed me this for the first time

this is a capacitance electronic disk a

very unusual video format that was

developed by RCA but was sort of a

commercial failure so they're kind of

hard to find the disc comes in this

plastic caddy and you put this whole

caddy in the Machine and then the

Machine would open it up and pull out

this basically video phonograph it's

it's an analog device it's basically it

has a track just like audio LPS do it's

just that the information density is so

much higher the track spacing is really

tight so you can actually see the light

diffraction patterns in this device so

here it is under the SEM and I've put it

next to the phonograph needle tip just

for comparison as you can see the track

density is incredibly tighter and the

method of storage is not quite the same

whereas on an audio record the needle is

actually vibrated by physical cuts in

the track on this capacitance electronic

disk it's actually the depth of the

track that makes the signal and the

needle doesn't really move

up and down so much as the capacitance

between the needle and the disc changes

interestingly this this capacitive

electronic disk is somewhat conductive

and the capacitance between it and the

needle is measured and as it spins

around the track thickness varies or the

trench depth almost the varies so as it

spins you get this signal correlated

with the capacitance changed as it goes

around it sounds incredibly difficult to

do technically and indeed it took RCA

from the late 60s all the way to the

early 80s to get this out and by that

time VHS beta and even laserdisc had

pretty much you know toasted it so this

format was dead on arrival and RCA lost

apparently hundreds of millions of

dollars I also wanted to take a look at

a cd-rom and these are read with a laser

of course but we can't just put this in

the electron microscope either even

though the the metal is aluminum

it's behind plastic so on this side it's

just polycarbonate on the surface and on

this side it's this protective lacquer

label so if we put this into the SEM

either side up all we'd see is a smooth

surface if anything because there's

actually no bumps on the surface that's

that's good because it protects the

media so I spent a long time trying to

figure out how to expose the aluminum

part at first I cut off a small bit and

put this into methylene chloride and

that dissolves the polycarbonate base

really well and you're left with this

very thin almost falling apart piece of

aluminum that has the pattern printed

into it but I had problems with a trace

amount of plastic being left on the

surface and it was just so curled up it

didn't work anyway I tried a bunch of

other things and then I found out the

thing that works best is just double

stick tape just get some really strong

double stick tape and stick it down to

the top of the disc and pull it off and

now we have a really fresh sample of

aluminum here and so if you come in with

a multimeter this is actually quite

conductive this is bare aluminum exposed

so here's what the cd-rom looks like and

of course this is a digital format so

instead of having a track vary in width

or depth the track is predefined and

then there's pits and lands carved into

it

of course the width of this is even

smaller than the redic

capacitive electronic disks were down to

about a 500 nanometer wide pit and I

think the track spacing is about 1.6

micron of course I also wanted to take a

look at a DVD and so unlike a cd-rom

that has the aluminum layer and a

protective lacquer on one side the DVD

is built sort of like a sandwich where

it's got a polycarbonate discs on the

top and the bottom and the aluminum

information layer is in the middle so to

get at the aluminum we just separate the

two parts and then that exposes the raw

aluminum surface the tracks facing on

this DVD is only about 700 something

nanometers and this is getting near the

limit of the resolution that I can pull

out of my scanning electron microscope

in its current condition at least okay

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