Who the heck are we and why should you care?

We Are Customer Centric

Our blueprint for success has always been driven by details.  We partner with clients and focus on their unique project until all goals are achieved.  We treat every customer as if they sign our paychecks . . . . because they do.

Our company

What do we produce?
How do we know this to be true?
What is NiPro Records production capacity?
What makes NiPro Records electroforming technology better than others?
What is the Groove Coat (GC) stamper?
Electroforming Technology for Sale?
Additional NiPro electroforming history

Lacquer information

Did you know that using tape to hold the edge strip to a lacquer is problematic?
Did you know that different lacquer types require a different cleaning process prior to silver spraying?
Where do tics and pops come from?
Where else can tics and pops come from?

 

NiPro Optics facility is 15,000 sf. The electroforming department is 6000 sf of this facility with a tiled and contained flooring system, sealed via positive air pressure / conditioning to help reduce dirt and dust. Some of the NiPro Records plating lines are show in this image.

Images of the first stages with silver nitrate / metal mastering. 

 

What do we produce?

Some of the best record pressing stampers in the industry.

 

How do we know this to be true?

By listening to each project (mother) as it’s produced for excessive noise and comparing it to the lacquer if needed.

By listening to our pressing customers and their feedback.

By developing new stamper manufacturing processes like the Groove Coat ? line exclusively from NiPro.

What is NiPro Records production capacity?

NiPro’s pilot program had a production capacity of 20 pair of lacquers a week during a normal 8 hour shift.

Six months into the launch of NiPro Records we were working 10 hour days and 6 days a week. At this point we decided to make our first expansion and redesigned and built our new 8 position line that now produces 40 pair of 2-step stampers a week during a normal 8 hour work day. We’ll make our next expansion at the end of 2017 as required by our customer base.

What makes NiPro Records electroforming technology better than others?

The following description is only a baseline. An actual detailed description of our experience and process is too encumbering for this conversation.

NiPro’s electroforming experience dates back more than 35 years beginning in the record industry but transferring to the optical industry once CDs took over record sales. Moving to the optical mold industry taught us details of the electroforming process that exceeds all other industries. We have learned how to modify the nickel grain and composition while controlling the internal chemistry stress of the solution. This improved understanding and process control produces stronger stamper substrates that last longer and sound better than what’s currently available. Also, being from the optical industry, NiPro has the most modern measuring technology available for measuring surface finish, form accuracy, or mechanical measurements via contact and non-contact cmm’s and many other tools at our fingertips if needed.

What is the Groove Coat stamper? 

Groove Coat stampers are the next evolution in stamper quality.  Specially designed for longer press life, these stampers bring efficiencies to record manufacturers for high volume projects.

Due to NiPro Records parent company’s extensive experience within the optical business, we have access to many modern technologies that others within the record business do not. Although we cannot describe the Groove Coat process due to it being a trade secret, we can provide some results from our customers.

One of our customers who has helped with the testing of the Groove Coat stampers recently wanted to purchase 15 sets of stampers for a 15,000 piece record order. NiPro produced 7 sets of stampers with the HC process plus two sets of stampers without the HC process. Out of the 9 sets of stampers they only used 6 sets of the HC stampers to complete the order. Assuming this becomes the norm, this is a savings of 9 extra sets of stampers that did not need to be purchased with an average life cycle of 2500 records per stamper plus the time saving of not having to change out the press more often resulting in a more continues flow of work at the record press saving more time and money still. Although more testing of the Groove Coat stampers will be done over this next year you should be asking one critical question of the industry in whole and that is, who else in the stamper industry is working on improving their process?  This be the first real change in the stamper business in over 50 plus years!

Electroforming Technology for Sale?

NiPro has developed state of the art process controls that have been purchased by optical companies over the years and is making its electroforming process for records available to those who might have the need for producing this type of product in-house. Although there are similarities in the general equipment designs between NiPro and others, the differences stop there. NiPro’s process is always leading edge – but equipment is useless without the correct training and once again, this is where NiPro stands out. All training is completed within NiPro and lasts for up to two months. We take the time to teach pro-active methods of running the process for the best possible product all of the time and not just the basics and send you off to figure it out by yourselves.  One of our optical customers has been using our process to manufacture optical molds for over 20 years.

Additional electroforming history:

Tom Gross manages NiPro Records.  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 a 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, 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.

 

Did you know….

Lacquer information.

Did you know that using tape to hold the edge strip to a lacquer is problematic?

The tape residue sticks to the lacquer and can cause contamination of other lacquers in the pre-cleaning soap bath before silver spraying. In order to minimize this potential contamination, we wipe the lacquer with acetone to smear the acetate substrate over the tape residue, basically encapsulating the problem. This method does work but the fumes from the acetone can linger over the cut music causing potential problems. The best solution is to not put tape on the lacquers in the first place.

Did you know that different lacquer types require a different cleaning process prior to silver spraying?

When shipping lacquers to NiPro, always identify the lacquer type to help us to separate them into different batches to allow for the different cleaning cycles.

Where do tics and pops come from?

Contrary to popular belief, the electroforming of lacquers is not the only place defects can be produced.

 

At NiPro, we have made our share of defective stampers due to process development and or just bad luck. However, because we listen and potentially trace back problems to the original substrates, we can say with full confidence that lacquers can also be delivered to NiPro for processing that have problems already in them before any part of the electroforming process is even started. NiPro does not claim to be an expert in the process of cutting music onto lacquers but we don’t need to be. We just listen and document every metal mother we produce and if an unwanted sound is heard, we try and note it on the sleeve the stamper ship inside of and play back the lacquer and listen for the defect. Sometimes it is easy to pick out the defect and at other times it may not be there.   Because we check our product we can lay claim to what has been said as true and factual.

 

Tics and pops can also come from the way lacquers are packaged for shipping. If lacquers are packaged inside a cardboard box that is not sealed (like a wax covered cardboard) and travel whatever distance they need to travel, it is shocking at the amount of dust that is on the lacquers when the box is opened at NiPro for the e-foming process.

 

This dust does not mean the stampers will have noise defects, but please keep in mind that the cleaning process of lacquers is a non-contact spray and or soap soaking method and if the dust does not work loose in these process steps, then it can produce a tic or a pop and we do not consider this to be an e-form defect.

 

This conversation naturally leads to a new packaging process of lacquers as a whole but this will be a different conversation a bit later this year.

Where else can tics and pops come from?

As stated, electroforming can produce noise, tics and pops.

These can happen for many reasons but the basics come down to the following:

• A dirty working environment. This can be in a dirty / dusty environment without room containment and positive air pressure and or non-processed air (not air conditioned) leading to a high humidity place of work.
• A poor source of water quality. Would you drink dirty water? What would make you think electroforming works well using dirty water?
• Dirty chemistry. There are two basic chemistry contaminants, organic and metallic. If you don’t thoroughly clean the chemistry after “X” amount of process time the bath will not perform to its best ability.
• Power supplies. Old and outdated power supplies that use the same technology from the early 20^th

 

Most of these items listed are written in stone and pertain to older operations that have been around for a few decades or longer. Everything for NiPro Records was developed with the stamper process in mind and is new. If the item could be purchased to our specifications it was. If the items needed to be produced from scratch, it was designed by NiPro and produced from scratch. NiPro’s stamper and optical electroforming departments are a modern facility that is second to none within the industry.