Chicago hasn’t had a working vinyl-pressing plant for at least 20 years. The last one was allegedly shut down by the FBI in the 90s for making bootleg 78 RPM records to sell in India. The presses from that facility, acquired in 2003 by Chicagoan Joell Hays, sat dormant in a local warehouse after Hays failed to find investors to get his own plant up and running. By the time Quality Record Pressings, run by Chad Kassem in Salina, Kansas, bought them in 2015, the machines were in wretched shape—rusted, clogged, and missing parts. But such is the demand for vinyl that Kassem bought 13 of them.
The WarmTone machine that Smashed Plastic bought is a modified version—an experiment by Viryl. “We’re the first steamless press in the world,” Polutnik explains. Vinyl presses usually require a steam boiler to melt the PVC pellets, but Viryl has designed a hot-water system that can achieve the necessary 285 degrees Fahrenheit without the use of steam or even a tank.
