Audio knurling

Traditionally, a knurler was a highly-skilled employee who, with the aid of his quartz-tipped briding-point, would painstakingly carve those strangely attractive yet functional regular grooves into metal surfaces, turning them into everyday works of art.

Nowadays, of course, knurling is done using machine- tools such as the Knurlmaster, usually under computer control.

Howevertheless, contemporary knurlers are missing a trick. Modern machine tools typically have resolutions down in the micron range, and can be controlled quickly and precisely.

This opens up the option of making knurling that is more than just decoratively functional. An audio signal, fed to the knurling machine, can be used to modulate the knurl depth. The resulting Audio Knurling can be played back simply by tracing a piece of metal swarf along the helical path of the knurl.

Of course, most knurling consists of multiple parallel lines, usually running in two opposite helical directions (known, should you be wondering, as Nepalese knurling, after a misunderstanding on where it originated). This provides the opportunity to encode two independent pieces of music (left and right handed), each with multiple tracks, to be played using a suitably fine- toothed comb.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that the threads of screws and bolts can accommodate simple monophonic recordings, with particularly bass-rich tracks providing extra grip.

Post-finally, I should perhaps mention that we have recently prototypified a rifled rifle barrel which, on firing, produces a 0.3msec excerpt from Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.