About NiPro Records
The short story of the past, present and future
The Past
NiPro Records is managed by Tom Gross. His original training was at United Records where he stayed in what’s now the “Motown Suite” while training at the electroforming facility down stairs and in the building next door under the watchful eyes of Tom Ingram and Mike Simpkins. After training, Tom when back to Tempe Arizona to setup and start the electroforming department within the new pressing plant called Superior Records. Superior was a new facility with 4 new SMT, 7” double cavity presses and 8 SMT, 12” LP presses and was part of this once in a lifetime opportunity to learn and be a part of this new operation. Tom produced many of the new Motown metal masters that after approval, replications were sent to other records pressing facilities under the United Records umbrella for mass production. To this day, he is grateful for this opportunity to learn the electroforming and records pressing technologies. They have been a serious part of everything he did from that time and into the future, building different optical companies and now the new NiPro Records division. On one last note about the old days, Tom would like to express his thanks to Robert and Carol Rothwell who ran Superior Records at the time he worked there – they were great people. In addition, thanks to John Dunn and Ozell Simpkins who were not only the owners that Tom encountered at United from time to time but were also very nice and down to earth people. These people in one form or another helped to mold Tom as a person in his early years of pressing records.
The Present
NiPro Records was started after several conversations with Matt Earley from Gotta Groove records and Chris Muth who suggested there was an opportunity to re-enter the stamper producing business and have been central to the early growth of NiPro Records. After these initial conversations and Gotta Grooves Generation Wax gathering, the commitment to start the new division within NiPro Optics was made in November 2016 to design and built a 4 position pilot operation which began stamper production in April of the following year. After re-learning many of the stamper production routines and developing many refined manufacturing technics the decision to expand the operation to a new 8 position high speed line was made and was made operational in January of 2017. Interesting enough, this new and expanded line proved to be too small and a second 8 position line was committed to and commissioned at the end of August 2017. This now brings NiPro Records up to 4 positions for lacquer pre-plating and 16 positions for high speed stamper production. As of July 2018 NiPro Records has committed to expanding a 3rd time bringing our high-speed plating count up to 24 positions. This makes NiPro records bigger than some and smaller than others.
The Future
If you’re an old timer in the record industry you’re probably thinking that nothing has changed with the manufacturing technology when it concerns electroforming. Although the basic concept remains the same, the equipment and process design hasn’t and NiPro Records can say with confidence that we have the most advanced electroforming technology in the world. Some of our processes cannot be released while others can like the like the…
Groove-Coat stamper is new and exclusive process provides a longer stamper life for pressing runs that exceed 2000 parts per order. On average, this process has run in excess of 3500 records before needing a stamper change.
Lacquer Cleaning is also at the top of NiPro Records process improvement agenda. Before the end of 2017 we will have a new none contact cleaning process that will do a much better job of cleaning the dust and debris out of the lacquer grooves which will translate into better sounding music on the backend of the process.
Superior Backside Sanding of Stampers due to our own customized equipment developed by and for NiPro Records which provides a crosscut pattern for a cleaner vinyl record.
Another first for an electroforming company is the development of the new lacquer packaging concept being designed and when finished, offered to cutting labs as a new and cleaner way to ship lacquers without the use of nuts, bolts, washers or spacers. The package will hold two lacquers as a unit and each unit can stack upon the next to make shipping 2 or 4, 6, 8 or more lacquers at a time in a plastic formed environment that is also free of cardboard or Styrofoam debris.