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Watch to polarity of the speakers-if you install one of them backwards, they will be out of phase.įinally, the enclosures here were covered in cotton fabric. I soldered heavy copper wires to these, which could be soldered on the speaker wires inside the enclosure, and to the speakers themselves. To couple the speakers to the outside, I used 3/16 brass bolts. It seems to be holding up fine.īeing sealed, the speaker are not accessible after the enclosures are assembled. The feet were made of 1x2 pine which were screwed to "cradles" made out of small sections of sonotube.
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Be careful with the cutting (I used a jigsaw-a circle cutting router jig would be better).
![diy speaker enclosure design diy speaker enclosure design](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xExMUDtRhFI/maxresdefault.jpg)
I used an actual compass set to the radius of the tubes, and first cut the piece from cardboard to make sure it would fit. Because of this, you can't just trace the inside of the tube onto the plywood. You will probably notice that the Sonotubes have been warped a little bit in shipping. It has an intense smell (the "amine blush"), but is really strong as well. There is no reason not to use standard auto-store polyester resin. It's easy to sand, and best of all, it has very little odor (I was working indoors in the winter). I used West system epoxy (available from several places online) which is a great product. The tubes were fiberglassed for strength. I selected 8" Sonotube for the 6" speaker, and 10" Sonotube for the 8" driver. They come in a large number of sizes, from 4" up to 24". Being cylindrical, they are surprisingly strong and really cheap. The main body of the enclosures are made from cardboard concrete forming tubes. It was made from thin card stock, held together with glue (paper reinforced corners) and finally covered with fiberglass cloth and epoxy. The sketch shows the one used here-a trapazoid shaped port that tapers from 2.75" to 3.5" at the opening. This can be removed by using a port that widens as it goes to the exit. It's possible in ported systems for the port to generate noise-an annoying "wooshing" sound as air is driven out and sucked in. The bottom enclosure also contains a port.
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The bottom enclosure was designed the same way. This was specified as the upper number for this particular speaker. For example, the top enclosure has an 8" diameter (r=4"). The area of a circle is A=pi*r^2, where pi=3.14,and r is the radius. Recall that you can calculate the volume of any regular solid by multiplying the area by the length. Also, in my case the information was available from the manufacturer. I will not endorse a volume calculator, but a search for "volume of sealed speaker cabinet" and "ported speaker cabinet" will give many results. Both the port and enclosed volumes are important considerations. In the system here, the 6" cabinet was carefully sealed (and is air tight), while the bottom 8" has a port. It's really just a matter of the forward and reverse sound waves not mixing very much. Jim Marshall claimed that building a Marshall Stack was really a matter of cramming enough power handling into a box. For my electronic gizmos, it's perfect.įor the open back cabinet, the volume enclosed by the box is not real critical. 6", in my opinion, is too small for really good guitar reproduction, and not of much use for bass. Do some reading and suit the enclosure to your needs. If I was to do it again, I would have gone with an 8" and 10", or even a 10" and 12". They are not as "room filling" as the open backed cabinet, but have a real tight, focused sound. Take it from me-sanding globs of epoxy or polyester resin off of the cement is no fun. Before you do anything-get some old beat up clothes, some disposable latex gloves, and several layers of cardboard under your work space. I'll be honest-the project made a real mess! ANY project involving fiberglass is a messy undertaking. The fiberglass finish is rather rough, and after a bit of sanding, I decided to kind of level it out with 80grit sandpaper, and cover it in some tie dye fabric (maybe that's another Instructable?)
DIY SPEAKER ENCLOSURE DESIGN DRIVERS
The idea was straight forward-fiberglass the tubes for strength, cap the ends with 1/2" plywood, and install some drivers and wiring. Second was doing some testing on Sonotubes for use as a telescope tube. First was talking with a friend who built a "kicker" for his car from a cardboard Sonotube (those concrete forms found at any hardware store). The idea was stemmed from 2 totally unrelated things. The top is a sealed system with a 6" driver, and the bottom is a ported system with an 8" driver. This cabinet features cylindrical enclosures and 2 speakers rather than one. I thought while I'm at it, I should describe my other cabinet that is used for guitar/bass, and also for testing electronic music circuits. I recently published an Instructable for an open back guitar/bass cabinet (), and it has received 200 views overnight! (thanks!).