LOCKGROOVE

turns a mono waveform into a spiral groove and exports a printable STL — hill-and-dale encoding, mechanically playable on a normal turntable

01 — Source Audio

Drop a WAV file here, or click to browse

Any format your browser can decode. Stereo is mixed down to mono — the groove is a single vertical cut, like an Edison cylinder, not a lateral stereo cut.

No file loaded.

02 — Disc & Detail

Disc size

Detail

Speed

Geometry & groove parameters (editable)

Disc outer radius (mm)

Groove band outer r (mm)

Groove band inner r (mm)

Spindle hole radius (mm)

Disc thickness (mm)

Groove pitch (mm/turn)

Groove width (mm)

Base + mod depth (mm)

Modulation depth (mm)

Encode rate (Hz)

Bit depth (levels)

Radial samples / pitch

03 — Cutting Preview

04 — Stats & Export

How this works: the audio is mixed to mono, low-pass filtered to the encode rate to avoid aliasing, quantized to the chosen bit depth, then wrapped into a spiral. Groove depth at every point along the spiral is base ± modulation × sample, so the stylus rides up and down as it traces the groove — the same principle Edison used for cylinders, adapted to a flat disc because it survives FDM printing far better than the lateral (side-to-side) cut real vinyl uses, which needs far finer resolution than a 0.4mm nozzle can hold.

Printing notes: print flat, groove-side up, no supports, no infill pattern showing through the top layers (increase top layer count if needed), and use the smallest layer height your printer/resin allows — coarser layer heights blur the amplitude steps into audible zipper noise. If your slicer flags the STL as non-manifold or flips normals, run its automatic mesh-repair pass first — that's routine for generated meshes like this one. You'll need a working turntable, a fresh stylus you don't mind risking, and low expectations for fidelity — this is closer to a talking postcard than a record.