cnx_vinyl/docs/equipment/galvanics.md

Galvanics and Stamper Prep: Equipment Plan

The metal path turns a cut lacquer into press-ready nickel stampers: silvering, electroforming of father, mother and stampers, passivation between generations, then punching, back-finishing and coining (stages 4 and 5 in the process flow). It is Phase 5 item 23 in the roadmap, with an open case for pulling it forward; until it runs, bridge stampers come from Stamper Discs. This page holds the equipment data for it, the way pressing-line.md does for the presses.

Sources are vendor datasheets filed with the Making Vinyl Europe 2026 material in October 2026: Pheenix Alpha's electroforming range (four flyers dated September 2024, in pheenix-alpha/) and Sibert's vinyl stamper prep line (technical specifications dated April 2021, in sibert/), plus Sibert's 2008 to 2009 optical-disc literature (below). Every figure here is vendor-published, not quoted, and no document carries a price. Digital Matrix / Plating Power stays the comparison; its datasheets are not in the repo yet (see the vendor landscape).

Electroforming: the Pheenix Alpha range

Pheenix Alpha, the AD12 press maker, also builds the galvanics line. The four flyers:

Unit	What it does	Datasheet figures
PASU Automatic Silvering Unit	Cleaning station plus silver spray unit: the lacquer is cleaned, then silvered by an automatic spray sequence; foot-controlled spray faucet, overspill collection; the silver unit mounts left or right of the cleaning bench	W 2188 × D 715 × H 1835 mm, working height 900 mm; cleaning station up to 120 rpm, spray unit 45 rpm, four nozzles; 100 to 230 VAC single-phase, 10 A; water Ø20 hose, 2 × G3/4"; compressed air G1/2" at 6 bar; exhaust Ø125 mm at 150 m³/h; drain Ø32 mm
PPPU Pre-Plating Unit	First nickel layer on the silvered master: up to four masters at once, each position controlled on its own with its own cathode movement; integrated dummy plating; PID temperature control	W 1062 × D 1245 × H 1750 mm; 400/480 VAC three-phase, 16 A; tank 385 L, pump 10 m³/h, heater 4.5 kW, 2 × 20" filters; up to 15 VDC and 30 A per position; exhaust Ø63 mm; 500 mm service access behind the tank
PDPU Dual Plating Unit	Production electroforming: two cells, each with its own rotating cathode shaft and digitally controlled rectifier; titanium anode baskets; adjustable anode-to-cathode distance; options for a flow meter, automatic lid and selective cleaning	W 1070 × D 1350 × H 1800 mm; 400/480 VAC three-phase, 16 A; tank 385 L, 40 L per cell, pump 10 m³/h, heater 4.5 kW, titanium cooling coil; filters 10 µm pre and 2.5 µm fine; 45 rpm; anode baskets 30 kg each; parts up to Ø355 mm; up to 15 VDC and 200 A per cell; cooling water 12 to 20 °C, 5 bar, 10 L/min; exhaust Ø63 mm; 500 mm service access behind the tank
PMPB Modular Preparation Bench	Passivation, cleaning and drying between generations: removes lacquer residue, anodic passivation and cathodic cleaning for nickel and DMM parts, integrated pump, filtration and temperature control, sink with foot-controlled spray, spin table	W 1588 × D 775 × H 1700 mm, working height 920 mm; spin table up to 120 rpm; 100 to 230 VAC single-phase, 10 A; DI water G3/4"; drain Ø32 mm; exhaust ready

All four are built in stainless steel and polypropylene, the bench and plating units with titanium in the wetted parts. The two plating units are PLC-controlled with a 7" touch screen, user-programmable recipes and a network connection for remote access; the range advertises alerts for filter cartridge changes, nickel pellet top-up and anode basket cleaning.

What this changes in the plan:

• A second turnkey galvanics vendor. Until now Digital Matrix was the only one in the plan (roadmap item 6, the galvanics block in total investment). The Pheenix range covers the same four steps: silvering (PASU against Digital Matrix's VLSS), pre-plate (PPPU against VLPP), production electroforming (PDPU against the VLFP 2/4/6-cell system) and passivation (PMPB against the EC-1000). Pheenix calls itself the only manufacturer of both electroforming and pressing systems (vendor claim), so it can quote the whole chain from lacquer to pressed record: AD12 and AD12 Manual for the presses, this range for the metal. One conversation covers roadmap items 5 and 6, and the single-vendor risk is the same as for the presses.
• Lacquer and DMM. The PMPB passivates and cleans DMM parts as well as nickel, and Pheenix describes the range as built for lacquer and DMM families, so a DMM lathe (the open Sillitoe question in the vendor landscape) would not need different galvanics equipment, by the vendor's description.
• No water treatment in the flyers. None of the four covers rinse-water treatment or metal recovery, the same gap as Digital Matrix. The zero-discharge plant stays a separate vendor (sustainability); ask Pheenix which treatment partner its customers use.
• Utilities the galvanics room needs (from the datasheets):
  • Electrical: two 16 A three-phase units (~11 kVA each at 400 V) and two 10 A single-phase units (~2.3 kVA each), so ~27 kVA connected for one line by the rated currents (estimate). Actual draw is lower: at most 6 kW DC in the PDPU (2 cells × 15 V × 200 A) and 1.8 kW in the PPPU (4 × 15 V × 30 A), plus a 4.5 kW heater in each. Thai 400 V / 50 Hz three-phase fits. Not in the scale electrical table yet, because galvanics is Phase 5.
  • DI water at the PMPB: a deionised (RO plus polishing) water supply belongs in the galvanics utility list. The RO skid in the utilities CSV is an option row sized for boiler feed, not for this.
  • Cooling water at the PDPU: 12 to 20 °C at 5 bar and 10 L/min through its titanium coil, either a branch of the process chiller loop or a small dedicated chiller. 10 L/min is small next to the press moulds' ~220 L/min peak.
  • Extraction: Ø63 mm on each plating unit, Ø125 mm at 150 m³/h on the silvering unit. The fume-extraction interlock in facility security (no extraction, no plating) applies to every one.
  • Compressed air at 6 bar for the PASU; drains Ø32 mm.
• Space. One of each unit is ~5.6 m² of footprint (PASU 1.56, PMPB 1.23, PPPU 1.32, PDPU 1.44 m²), plus 500 mm service access behind the two tank units and working space around them: comfortably inside the 80 to 150 m² the zone table holds for clean room, water treatment and chemical store. At 1.70 to 1.84 m tall they fit under the room-in-room ceilings in the crane zone (crane, workshop and tours), and by their published dimensions all four pass through a 1.2 m double door, so the crane hatch in the clean-room lid is for the water-treatment evaporator rather than the plating units (check against crated sizes).
• Weight. Not published. Each tank unit holds 385 L of electrolyte, roughly half a tonne filled (estimate), plus 60 kg of nickel in the PDPU's anode baskets. Ask for empty and filled weights with the quote, for the slab design and the crane table.
• Data. PLC, recipes, network connection and maintenance alerts are on the datasheets; the protocol is not. Per the digital factory RFQ clauses: read access over Modbus TCP or OPC UA with the tag list, remote support through our mesh, no vendor cloud. The maintenance alerts are the bath events the galvanics record in traceability needs anyway.

Cycle times and cell count

Pheenix publishes no cycle times. Published practice from other plating rooms agrees with Faraday's law at the PDPU's 200 A ceiling (1.095 g of nickel per ampere-hour), and these are the times the plant operation page runs on:

Step	Time	Source
Silvering (clean, sensitise, spray, rinse)	~15 min	estimate; no published figure
Pre-plate	15 to 30 min at 10 to 20 A	~15 min at 35 °C (flight 13 duplication, Freiburg, in Leuze Verlag's Galvanotechnik report "Of fathers, mothers and sons"); ~20 min at ~20 A (Welcome to 1979, Nashville, on a Digital Matrix line, in Finishing and Coating); 30 min at 10 to 20 A (US patent 4,363,705)
Father	~1 h 15 min	~0.2 mm and ~200 g at 150 A and 11 V (flight 13); 1¼ h with the current raised from 20 to 200 A (US 4,363,705)
Mother	~1 to 1¼ h	1¼ h at 200 A (US 4,363,705); "as little as one hour" (Wikipedia, Production of phonograph records)
Stamper	~45 min	a 145 g stamper in 45 min (Wikipedia, same article)
Separation, passivation, cleaning and drying (PMPB)	~10 to 15 min	estimate
Back-finish (VSF), centre punch (VSP), coin (VSC)	~5 to 10, 3 to 5 and 1 to 2 min	estimate; Sibert publishes none

The count, from this repo's own demand figures:

• At full capacity the revenue model assumes 300 to 600 titles a year across 1.0 to 1.5 million records, so 2,500 to 3,300 records per title.
• Each title needs, per side, a father, a mother and two to three stampers (at 1,000 to 2,000 pressings per stamper): 8 to 10 electroformed parts per title, ~2,400 to 6,000 parts a year, 8 to 20 per working day at 300 days, before remakes.
• With ~15 minutes of loading, rinsing and unloading on top of 45 to 75 minutes of deposition, a cell turns a part in ~1 to 1.5 hours: 10 to 16 parts per cell per two-shift day, 20 to 32 per PDPU.

So one PDPU covers full-capacity demand with headroom for remakes, and a second PDPU buys redundancy rather than capacity, which is how Pheenix itself sells it ("more capacity as well as enhanced redundancy"). The first version of this page assumed 2 to 3 hours per part and concluded that the high end needed two. One PASU, one PPPU (pre-plate is for the masters, 2 to 4 a day at full capacity, and the unit takes four at once) and one PMPB cover the rest. Ask Pheenix for measured cycles at the plant's thickness before this goes into a budget.

Stamper prep: the Sibert VS line

Sibert's three vinyl machines, from the 2021 technical specifications:

Machine	What it does	Specification figures
VSP Vinyl Stamper Punch	Punches the centre hole after optical centring on the groove	Punch and die M2 high-speed steel, Ø25.4 mm standard (other sizes available), ±0.002 mm; turntable Ø360 mm, 6 mm centring travel, ±0.0015 mm rotational accuracy; pneumatic automatic pre-centring, then manual fine centring; optics ×100, graticule 15 divisions at 0.10 mm, viewing diameter Ø90 to 110 mm (centres on the lead-out groove); pneumatic punch cylinder 100 mm bore, 50 mm stroke; 115 to 230 VAC single-phase, 250 VA; air 6 to 8 bar, 4.5 L/s during the punch stroke; 200 kg; spare punch and die on request
VSF Vinyl Stamper Finisher	Automatic wet back-finishing with automatic stamper cleaning	Turntable Ø365 mm, vacuum plus mechanical quick-release clamping on moulded rubber mats, 150 to 1500 rpm; head pressure 0 to 50 psi, 150 to 1500 rpm, motorised traverse; 5-station quick-change disc head including a cleaning pad; abrasive grades P120 to P2500 (nine grades); closed water loop, 0.6 µm absolute or 5 µm nominal filtration plus a 10 µm bag in the tank; 115 to 230 VAC single-phase, 1200 VA; air 6 to 8 bar, 3.1 L/s; 250 kg
VSC Vinyl Stamper Coiner	Forms the centre and the edge and sizes the outer diameter in one hydraulic operation, so no trimming	Modular die sets for 7", 10" and 12" with automatic loading, three tool stations in the machine; "quick change tooling to suit all vinyl moulds"; M2 forming tools; locates on a removable ID spigot with two height settings; hydraulic with safety interlocks; 115 to 230 VAC single-phase, 1 kVA; air 6 to 8 bar, 4.5 L/s during forming; 600 kg

All three are aluminium frames on castors with levelling feet, guarded by 5 mm cast acrylic, and ship with a pressure regulator and filter.

What this changes in the plan:

• Single-phase power. All three run on 115 to 230 VAC, 50/60 Hz, ~2.5 kVA together, so the three-phase question from the Haarlem briefing falls away. Each needs 6 to 8 bar compressed air at ½" BSP minimum, so the air network has to reach the stamper prep room.
• Weights 200, 250 and 600 kg, on castors: pallet-truck moves, not crane lifts (crane table updated).
• Order of operations: finish, punch, coin. Gotta Groove's Electromastering Lab in Cleveland, which runs a Sibert VSF and VSP, back-sands first, then centres and punches on the VSP, then trims and coins the edge and forms the centre hole for the press type (recordplating.com). The VSC locates on the punched hole, which fits the same order. The process flow's "punch, back-finish, coin" names the operations, not their sequence.
• Centring is manual. The VSP pre-centres pneumatically, then the operator centres the lead-out groove under ×100 optics against the graticule. Concentricity depends on the operator, so the stage 5 check stays, and it is the measurement most worth automating. Sibert's 2009 optical-disc punch offered automatic centring with a measured centring value, a barcode reader for the stamper card and a LAN connection as options; the VS sheets list none of these. Ask whether the VS line takes them: the answer decides whether stamper prep stays a manual check-in station in the digital factory.
• Mould fit. The standard punch is Ø25.4 mm, other sizes on request, and the VSC claims tooling for every vinyl mould. Gotta Groove keeps nine centre-hole forming tools to fit the presses its customers run, which shows the scale of the question. Which centre hole and edge form each mould needs (Newbilt book mould, Pheenix/Toolex, M-Tech) has to come from the press vendors, and the tooling sets per mould type are a quote line. Whether the VSC duplicates anything a press vendor supplies is still open.
• The finisher's water carries nickel. The VSF's closed loop collects nickel fines and abrasive in its filters and bag. Spent water and filters go to the galvanics treatment and hazardous-waste route, never the drain (sustainability). Consumables: abrasive discs in up to nine grades, filter cartridges and bags, turntable mats.
• Service model (from the 2009 optical-disc literature; confirm for the VS line). Sibert services punch-and-die sets at its own works: resharpen, check alignment and vacuum, test-punch the customer's own stampers and issue a certificate (measured ID, ID-to-data concentricity, roundness, surface finish, front and back hardness HV0.3). It advises against local resharpening and sets shot-count warnings in the machine. For a plant in Thailand that means a spare punch and die in rotation (the VSP lists one on request) and a UK freight leg per service. In 2009 Sibert also had a Singapore branch; ask whether regional service still exists. The certificate's fields are a ready list for the stamper prep record in traceability.

Optical-disc reference material

sibert/sps-optical-disc-2009/ holds Sibert's SPS (Stamper Preparation System) literature from 2008 and 2009, punching and finishing modules with their workflows, maintenance lists and upgrade options, and the August 2008 Blu-ray stamper characteristics paper by Sony DADC, Singulus, Sibert and technotrans. These are optical-disc documents and their limits are not vinyl specifications. What carries over:

• The structure of a stamper acceptance spec: thickness, flatness, hardness, back roughness before and after finishing, outer diameter, centre hole, eccentricity, burr and visual defect counts, each with a measurement method. CNX has the instruments (quality automation) but no written limits yet; this paper is the model to write them against.
• Hardness on the centre slug. Hardness is measured on the disc punched out of the centre, never on the part, and a fresh nickel bath plates soft at first, which changes how stampers punch and finish. Taken into quality automation.
• Back-finish pattern. Random crossing scratches, uniform over the surface, worked best for Blu-ray; concentric scratches were not recommended. The SPS finisher reached Ra 0.03 µm. No vinyl figure is on file: ask Sibert what the VSF reaches and what vinyl plants specify.
• Tool wear shows in the hole. Hole size shrinks by a few microns as the punch and die wear, so a shot count per punch-and-die set belongs in the genealogy record next to each stamper's concentricity.

The SPS material is directly relevant only if CD replication, the investor's request in the project timeline, ever goes ahead.

Open questions for the quotes

• Pheenix Alpha: price and lead time for one line (PASU, PPPU, PDPU, PMPB) and for a second PDPU, quoted alongside the AD12; empty and filled weights; measured cycle per part per cell at stamper, mother and father thickness; PLC protocol and tag list; DI water quality; which water-treatment partner its customers use; reference plants running the range.
• Sibert: prices and lead time for VSP, VSF and VSC; tooling sets per mould type and their cost; automatic centring, barcode and network options on the VS line; punch-and-die service from Thailand (UK works or a regional partner); the roughness the VSF reaches; what it installed at Pheenix in January 2025, and whether Pheenix sells Sibert machines with its line.
• Press vendors (Newbilt, Pheenix, M-Tech): the stamper centre hole and edge form each mould expects, so the punch size and coiner tooling can be ordered to match (pressing line).

Source documents

• pheenix-alpha/: PASU, PPPU, PDPU and PMPB flyers (September 2024; renamed from their download names). The flyers give Pheenix Alpha AB's address as Skepptuna, Märsta, Sweden; info@pheenixalpha.com, helpdesk@pheenixalpha.com.
• sibert/: VSP, VSF and VSC technical specifications (April 2021). Sibert Instruments Ltd, Alton, Hampshire, UK; sales@sibert.co.uk.
• sibert/sps-optical-disc-2009/: SPS punching and finishing literature (2008 to 2009), the punch-and-die return form, and the Blu-ray stamper characteristics paper (2008).