Speaker From Scratch (Not just the cabinet)

Archived from groups: rec.audio.tech (More info?)

Good luck with that! I have seen places where you can buy replacement cones,
surrounds, voice coils, dust caps, even spiders, but where would you get a
basket? And why? I'm not absolutely sure, but I think speaker magnets are
magnetized after they are put together with the basket, pole plate and plug.
Maybe I'm completely crazy, but I think I remember reading about that years
ago. How else could you align the parts without them sticking together?
Also, from what I understand, there are companies that specialize in just
one part. In other words one company will make nothing but baskets, another
company makes the cones and another makes the spiders, voice coils, etc.
Then the "manufacturer" just assembles the parts; much like you want to do.
You might have a hard time getting a few parts rather than thousands. What
is it that you think you would do differently than what you find in speakers
that are already made? Why not just buy speakers and modify them in the way
you like?

http://www.akrobiz.com/speakers/

Take care. James. )




"bmearns" <bmearns@coe.neu.edu> wrote in message
news:1127873924.942310.200170@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> I want to build a speaker from scratch. Everything I find online has
> people buying the audio driver, and building the cabinet. I want to
> build the audio driver, too, but I don't know what to use for the
> basket or the spider. I'm also having some difficulty finding speaker
> magnets.
>
> Any suggestions or direction will be very much appreiciated. Thanks!
>

Archived from groups: rec.audio.tech (More info?)

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 03:12:14 GMT, "James Lehman"
<james[remove]@akrobiz.com> wrote:

>Good luck with that! I have seen places where you can buy replacement cones,
>surrounds, voice coils, dust caps, even spiders, but where would you get a
>basket? And why? I'm not absolutely sure, but I think speaker magnets are
>magnetized after they are put together with the basket, pole plate and plug.
>Maybe I'm completely crazy, but I think I remember reading about that years
>ago. How else could you align the parts without them sticking together?

I've not heard about how they are made, but perhaps you could have
a non-magnetic, plastic 'pipe' that fills the magnetic gap, fitting
perfectly over the centerpole piece and perfectly inside the outside
pole. Put glue in appropriate places, assemble parts, and pull out the
'pipe' after the glue dries.

>Also, from what I understand, there are companies that specialize in just
>one part. In other words one company will make nothing but baskets, another
>company makes the cones and another makes the spiders, voice coils, etc.
>Then the "manufacturer" just assembles the parts; much like you want to do.
>You might have a hard time getting a few parts rather than thousands. What
>is it that you think you would do differently than what you find in speakers
>that are already made? Why not just buy speakers and modify them in the way
>you like?

I can understand the OP's quest, making it from scratch is the
challenge of DIY.

The donut-shaped "Speaker magnets" should be the easiest parts, get
them from old speakers <g> or from the magnetrons in old microwave
ovens (I'm not sure if the magnetron magnets have the correct
north-south oerientation, only that they stick to refrigerators well).
If you don't like that idea, try some online surplus electronics
dealers, most of them have interesting neodynm (sp) magnets, or you
can get them out of old hard disk drives.
The moving parts for woofers are available as "recone" kits though
it may be fun to make these parts as well. As far as the magnetic
circuit and the basket, it could help to have a friend at a
sheet-metal and/or machine shop. There are people who have machine
shops in their basements and garages over on rec.crafts.metalworking,
perhaps you could interest one of them in such a project.
It seems one could build a ribbon tweeter quite easily, especially
with the recent crop of high-tech magnets. ISTR at least one article
from Audio Amateur or Speaker Builder from way back when on making a
ribbon tweeter from scratch, as well as an electrostatic. Now that I
think about it, it was the "make your own Heil 'air motion
transformer' tweeter" cover article in 1977 that turned me on to that
magazine.

And I can see the goal as being not neccesarily something that
"sounds good" to someone who has technical audio interest, but that
"sounds reasonable" to an average person. That is, it makes listenable
sound, plays at a moderate volume, and has no obvious problems such as
the voice coil rubbing on a pole piece. If it actually "sounds good"
that would be icing on the cake.


>http://www.akrobiz.com/speakers/
>
>Take care. James. )
>
>
>
>
>"bmearns" <bmearns@coe.neu.edu> wrote in message
>news:1127873924.942310.200170@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>> I want to build a speaker from scratch. Everything I find online has
>> people buying the audio driver, and building the cabinet. I want to
>> build the audio driver, too, but I don't know what to use for the
>> basket or the spider. I'm also having some difficulty finding speaker
>> magnets.
>>
>> Any suggestions or direction will be very much appreiciated. Thanks!
>>
>

It actually doesn't seem that hard to build your own drivers (though they might not sound very good).

the first thing I built in speaker building class (they had that at my HS) was a speaker driver using a plastic cup, some copper wire, scrap paper (to wrap the copper wire around) and a rod magnet. We only put like 20 winds on the thing, and hooked it up to the receiver, and clear music came out... though very faint... but not bad for something built in 5 mins.

There's a japanese comanpy that makes a kit to build your own Fostex speaker driver. Someone sells it on ebay.

As for building the thing completely from scratch, the hardest part would be the basket. If you have machine shop skills, than this should be easy, other wise, you could probably still make it out of sheet metal. A lot of technical book shops (lindsaybks.com) sell books on fabricating stuff from sheet metal by hand (like how they used to make armour in the middle ages). I forgot the name of the technique. Or you could just cut out pieces in a sheet and solder/weld it together? Dunno... but it doesn't seem that hard if you're determined.

As for the suspension, for the rubber/foam surround, you could buy a driver-fixing kit, or you could make your own surround from sheet rubber or foam.

The cone can be made out of paper pulp (just like making your own paper I guess... people do that as a hobby). It would be really easy to make a fiberglass cone, since hobby shops sell fiberglass cloth and epoxy specifically for molding your own things. It would be really easy to mold your own cone.

The dust cap wouldn't be a problem (buy or make from w/e materials you want).

The spider suspension is the only thing i'm not too sure of. I think most speakers use some sort of rubber cloth material (i'm pretty sure you can find something similar to it in stores) and then mold it using some sort of glue, bond, epoxy.. etc. I guess you could figure something out by experiment?


The fostex kit to make ur own driver seems fun though.